Niger president plays down food crisis

Niger’s president played down the food crisis ravaging his desert nation, saying that people in the impoverished West African country “look well-fed”.

In an interview with the BBC, President Mamadou Tandja acknowledged that a devastating locust invasion last year and poor rains had produced food shortages, but he said that was not unusual for his country – or for the entire Sahel region, a semi-desert scrubland that straddles the southern edge of the Sahara desert.