As most of you already know by now, Mirriah is one of my favourite places in Niger. It is an old village with an ancient heritage, rich in century old Baobab trees and known for its vegetable gardens. Situated 20km from Zinder, it is a place I love to go to for a Sunday excursion, [...]

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Cash handouts - the solution for West Africa or another way of keeping the aid circus running?
IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), which is part of the UN but supposedly editorially independent, recently published an article about aid and cash handouts, entitled “West Africa: Do high food prices warrant a cash response?”

Experts say many of [...]

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As many of you know by now, Niger is in the middle of its yearly three month long rainy season. According to the unofficial aid calender, this time of the year (up until the millet harvest in October) is considered the true “hunger season”, and yet Niger’s nature’s pantry is (as always) in full bloom. [...]

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The following chronical was originally published in Bergens Tidende on april 28th. Entitled “Apologize, Egeland”, it was my response to Jan Egeland’s dead silence concerning his dealings with the Niger 2005 famine scam, a “famine” he was so involved with that he credited himself for having solved the entire issue. With Egeland having recently visited [...]

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Famine food is supposed to refer to food that is consumed in times of great need and which can act as a indication of famine or extreme difficulties, but more often than not, famine food is a derogative expression for local food in remote places that rest of the world knows little or nothing about. [...]

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A great wrong is being done to an entire food culture when indigenous Nigerien foods are referred to as “famine food”, just because the West does not know them. When Hilary Andersson of the BBC came to Niger in 2004-05, her team filmed people eating leaves, and Ms Anderson concluded in her reports that they [...]

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The Norwegian documentary Sultbløffen is on the move. It will air on the Swedish channel TV4 on Sunday 7.20 pm. Here is a rough translation of what they write:

Norwegian TV2: ”The famine in Niger exaggerated”
Summer 2005
During the summer of 2005, a tragic drama unfolded on our TV screens. A documentary produced by Norwegian TV2, shows [...]

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Norwegien Dagbladet came out with an article about the documentary that will air this evening. This roughly translates to:

Egeland accused of bluffing about starvation
By Cathrien Slaaen
In the documentary The Famine Scam, former UN aid coordinator Jan Egeland, together with the BBC, are accused of informing the world about a famine in Niger that didn’t exist.
During [...]

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