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The current food crisis in Niger is likely to escalate into a full-scale humanitarian emergency if urgent action is not taken, international agency Oxfam warned today. Already, 1.9 million people are at severe risk, and by April, this number could rise to 3.5 million people if help doesn’t come now, according to the National Early Warning System.

“I used to be able to harvest 100 bundles of millet from my field."

Some 13 million people are at severe risk from a food crisis which is set to escalate into a full scale humanitarian emergency in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa if urgent action is not taken.

Musician Baaba Maal visited Mauritania where a food crisis now affects one in four people across the country. Oxfam is calling for urgent interventions to avoid the worst over the coming months, as well as long-term investments to strengthen the resilience of populations.

Estimates of people in need of assistance in the Sahel increases to over 11 million people, as agency warns humanitarian efforts need to be stepped up in the coming weeks.

The FSNAU has announced that the famine status in Somalia has ended.

More than 13 million people are still affected by the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

The new escalation in fighting and insecurity along the Kenya-Somalia border risks increasing the suffering for civilians already devastated by drought and conflict, international agency Oxfam said today, three months since famine was announced in Somalia.

The world must put people’s lives before politics if is to stand any chance of aiding people suffering from the famine in Somalia, a group of 20 aid agencies said today in an open letter. While aid is getting through in many areas, it is not at the scale needed.

International agency Oxfam is airlifting 47 tonnes of vital water supply and hygiene materials to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, as the aid community scales up its effort to bring relief to the drought-stricken country.