Aid culture blamed for Niger famine

IN Niger most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Some 40% of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning five.

And that’s when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces.

To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas.