United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Niger yesterday to focus international attention on a swath of northwest Africa where the UN says drought and locusts have left some 5 million people facing severe food shortages.

Annan's first stop was the eastern city of Zinder, one of several areas hard-hit by the food crisis.
 
He was welcomed at Zinder Airport by President Mamadou Tandja, who has accused the UN, aid groups and opposition parties of exaggerating his country's problems for political and economic gain.

Annan is expected to visit Zinder's main hospital, tour a feeding center and speak to officials and humanitarian workers before leaving for the capital, Niamey, 750 kilometers to the west.

He spends today with Tandja and other top officials before leaving the same day.

The UN says the combined effects of drought and locusts have left some 3.6 million people facing severe food shortages in Niger this year. At least 1.6 million people in other Sahel countries Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania are also affected.

Annan, who was recently visiting his native Ghana, wants to show his solidarity with the government and the people of Niger as they deal with the aftermath of accelerating desertification, prolonged drought and repeated locust infestations, the UN said in a statement ahead of the trip.

Niger's President Tandja is also the chairman of ECOWAS, the organization of west African states, and Annan will also consult with him on regional issues, it said.

Tandja said earlier this month that his people "look well-fed" despite images and stories of skeletal, malnourished babies that have streamed out of the nation for weeks.

Tandja has acknowledged food shortages, however, but said they weren't unusual for his country or for the entire Sahel region, a semi-desert scrubland that straddles the southern edge of the Sahara Desert.

Medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the clinic in Zinder and has treated more than 21,000 severely malnourished children this year, said the United Nations should have begun emergency food distribution to tackle the crisis much earlier.

"The UN was slow to react to the current epidemic of acute malnutrition in Niger, and its response continues to be inadequate," MSF said in a statement.

MSF also said that the emergency rations were not reaching those who needed it most due to a reliance on data on harvests, rather than information on where people were suffering from the worst hunger, in deciding where to distribute food.

(China Daily August 24, 2005)