Hundreds of thousands of people inSenegal and Mauritania are at risk of going hungry in the coming year becausenot enough grass has grown to feed the region's cattle, analysts said onFriday.
Satellite maps show barren pasturesacross large swaths of the two West African countries, which means animals willdie, robbing owners of their sole source of food and income.
"Livestock herding is the keypillar of food security for the area," said Alex Orenstein, a datascientist specialising on pastoralism in the Sahel.
"Herders feel the pain first,but it touches everyone in the region soon enough," he said.
A similar lack of pasture in 2017left 5 million people needing food aid the subsequent year across six countriesin West Africa's Sahel region, a grassy zone below the Sahara desert.
There are not yet estimates of the number of people who could be affected by the current situation, but in some areas it looks worse than 2017, said Zakari Saley Bana, a disaster risk reduction advisor for the charity Action Against Hunger (ACF).
About 350,000 families depend oncattle herding in Senegal, according to a pastoralists' association.
"The situation is veryworrisome," Saley Bana said, estimating that aid agencies will need tostep up assistance.
The Sahel has a rainy season fromJuly to September, after which herds must survive on whatever grass has grownuntil the next rainy season.
This year, the rain did not start until late August.
