The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is expanding support for food-insecure people and acutely malnourished children in Niger. USAID has committed more than $105 million in humanitarian assistance to date in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010.
In response to alerts from early warning systems and field assessments as early as October 2009, USAID began to procure U.S. food aid in November 2009. When later assessments indicated increased needs, USAID increased funding for emergency programs supporting food security, nutrition, agriculture, and economic recovery and market systems and drew on the resources of the newly authorized Emergency Food Security Program to provide grants to the U.N.