After two years of living on family handouts, Issa Kaloumbou has returned to his red pepper farm in southeastern Niger because of a decline in attacks by Islamist militants based in neighbouring Nigeria.
Kaloumbou is one of an estimated 30,000 farmers who are resuming growing red peppers, the main crop in Niger’s Lake Chad area, following the government’s lifting of a two-year-old ban imposed amid a surge in jihadist attacks. The red pepper harvest used to generate more than 7 billion CFA francs ($14 million) annually. Fishing on the lake remains prohibited.
“We’ve suffered terribly,” Kaloumbou, 41, said by phone from the village of Yebi, about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) from the capital, Niamey. “I used to make good money with peppers. When they banned production, I was forced to ask family for a bit of cash just to survive.”
The lifting of the ban signals the declining fortunes of the militants in southeastern Niger. Still, jihadists have triggered a full-blown humanitarian crisis in the region, worsened by an influx of refugees who fled the violence in Nigeria. More than 400,000 people in the southeast urgently need food, according to the United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, which runs shelters and helps to distribute food.
If farmers can return to growing red peppers and other crops “they will be less vulnerable and as a consequence, less dependent on humanitarian aid,” Katy Thiam, an OCHA spokeswoman, said from Niamey. “This could be good news.”
Source: bloombergquint.com