Key Messages
- Food security conditions across the region are steadily improving with the increasingly widespread harvests and large shipments of rainy season crops to markets since October.
- Nominal prices for different crops are falling in production zones but are still high in deficit areas which are still awaiting an influx of commercial trade. This is contributing to the moderate levels of food insecurity found mainly in the northeastern Sahel and among poor urban households after last year's severe food deficits.
- In general, food availability is above-average across the region. However, poor households still suffering from the persistent effects of last year's food crisis and this year's flooding in northern Nigeria (Kebbi, Zamfara, Jigawa, and Sokoto), northwestern and eastern Chad, northeastern Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin, face a threat of food insecurity between November of 2010 and March of 2011. Nevertheless, with timely aid for off-season crops, prospects are good for a favorable food security situation through January if not March of 2011, provided the lasting effects of the 2009 crisis are brought under control, assistance programs designed to combat malnutrition are extended, there is adequate support for off-season farming activities, and markets continue to function normally.