Kives sharing lessons from Niger at News Café Monday

Join us at 7 p.m. Monday as Free Press reporter Bartley Kives shares photos and observations from a recent trip to the central African nation of Niger.

In May, Kives tagged along with humanitarian groups as they crisscrossed southern Niger, a country that ranks as one of the most environmentally devastated places on Earth. Nigeriens are dealing with rapid population growth, food-security issues, climate change, regional instability and an overall shortage of resources that may be difficult for Canadians to conceive.

Bartley will share images and thoughts from his time in Niger and will try to figure out what lessons the rest of the world can take from what the nation is experiencing.

More mouths but less to feed them

DOGON DAWA, Niger -- Amina Moussa has six children. Her husband's two other wives have another eight in total. Factor in the four adults, and this south-central Nigerien household has 18 mouths to feed.

By the standards of a developed nation, this is an immense number of people under one roof. But it's pretty much average for Niger, one of the world's least developed countries -- and home to the planet's highest birthrate.

The average woman in Niger has 7.5 children. For every 1,000 people in this African nation, there will be 50 live births this year, according to Nigerien estimates. Though offset somewhat by high child mortality, the Nigerien population is nonetheless growing at a rate of roughly 3.5 per cent per year.

The official population, based on a 2010 estimate, is 15.3 million. The actual population is likely closer to 16 million. The UN expects that figure to swell to 22 million by 2025.

Trees, shrubs vanishing from Sahel

TORODI COMMUNE, Niger -- On the side of a dirt track in southwestern Niger, long rows of neatly stacked wood tell the tale of the nation's deforestation.

When farmers in the Sahel region find themselves short on food, one of the common coping strategies involves cutting down trees, selling the wood and using the cash to buy millet and other staples.

This in itself would be disastrous in one of the most environmentally degraded places on the planet. But wood sales are only one reason Niger's trees are disappearing.

Decades of declining agricultural productivity have led millet and sorghum farmers to plant crops on every available patch of land, which often means removing the trees and shrubs that hold the soil in place.

The suffering Sahel

Niamey, Niger -- For the second time in as many years, a food-security crisis is looming over Africa, this time over a broad and rain-starved swath of the continent known as the Sahel.

Food shortages in the Horn of Africa threatened the lives of millions in 2011. Local and international relief efforts prevented famine conditions from arising in Kenya and Ethiopia, but mass deaths occurred in Somalia due to the failed state's inability to mount an effective response to food shortages.

The United Nations fears a similar crisis is taking shape this year in the Sahel, a semi-arid strip of Africa that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert.

Drought and crop failures threaten the food security of millions in Mauritania, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, the nations that collectively make up the West African portion of the Sahel. Estimates of the number of people at risk of hunger or malnutrition vary from six million to 15 million.