Mauritania, located in the arid Sahel region of West Africa, is one of the world’s least developed countries. The population numbers 3 million, and the country is ranked 137 out of 177 in the 2008 UNDP Human Development Index. The southern strip of the land is part of the Sahel, where farmers and agropastoralists are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate variation, drought, and small-scale crises. In an area where the annual five to six month “lean season” always brings hunger and where rainfall is unpredictable, this has strained the resources of the rural poor. To compound these concurrent crises, a food crisis hit Mauritania in 2008, when food prices skyrocketed, surpassing the purchasing power of the majority of the population and leading to a sharp increase in food insecurity levels.
The high level of poverty in the country, which affects 68 percent of rural inhabitants, implies a high vulnerability to food insecurity. The food deficit is structural: the means of production are limited; agricultural capacity is under-exploited, farmland is prone to desertification, and low agricultural output (30 percent of national cereal needs) has led to a high dependence on imports to address these needs. Rising prices of basic food products, specifically cereals, combined with a decrease in household revenue in rural areas due to repeated food crises over previous years has increasingly led to accessibility difficulties and an elevated risk of food insecurity.
According to the results of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) conducted by the Ministry of Health and UNICEF in the second semester of 2007, the level of malnutrition in the country remains high: global acute malnutrition is 12.6 percent, with peaks exceeding 15 percent in some regions, hinting at localized nutritional crises. These levels remain above the 10 percent World Health Organisation alarm threshold and have led WFP to streamline and reinforce its community-based nutrition programme for moderately malnourished children and pregnant and lactating women.
The February 2009 food security survey (ESAM-09) indicates that 137,500 of Mauritanians are severely food insecure and 245,500 are moderately food insecure. This signals a 14 percent decrease in persons living in food insecurity since 2008, suggesting that WFP’s high food price interventions and actions of the Government during 2008 had a positive impact on food insecurity levels following the food crisis in 2008.
WFP runs two operations in the most food insecure regions of Mauritania. These aim to save lives, to strengthen the livelihoods of populations affected by natural disasters, to make vulnerable people more resilient to shocks as well as to support national capacity building in addressing food security.
In 2008 and 2009, the bulk of these activities are implemented in the southern agro-pastoral regions and the peri-urban periphery of the capital city Nouakchott.
WFP’s relief and recovery operation focuses on life-saving activities, community asset creation, access to village food security reserves and community supplementary feeding centres for malnourished children. The activities aim also to strengthen the national capacities of response mechanisms for emergency situations.This two-year project targets more than 750,000 vulnerable people, including poor rural communities, malnourished children aged under-five and pregnant and lactating women, and returnees from Senegal.
WFP’s Development Programme has two components: school feeding to support 161,000 primary school children and food-for-work activities in favour of 195,000 rural poor.The ongoing project is expected to end in December 2009.
