La crisi alimentare del 2005 in Niger: bilancio e prospettive

Abstract

This paper intends to describe and contextualize one of the most delicate and controversial moments in the economic and political history of Niger of the past few years: the famine and the food crisis of 2005. This phenomenon has triggered a spiral of disputes and critical reactions among International Organizations such as the World Food Programme, the Government of Niger, first of all the President Tandja, and many NGOs, especially Médicines sans Frontièrs (MSF). In general, the close examination of this crisis allows to better understand the internal politics of Niger, often cryptic for international observers, its twilight zones, its elements of strictness, as well as for the contradictions of international aids to rural development and the local responses, extremely different from one region to another. Such a crisis and its consequences have to be investigated within a national context characterized by a civil society, which stands more and more against the political regime, as well as by high-pitched diatribes about the possibility of a third political mandate of President Tandja and by a spreading influence of fundamentalist associations.