The Sahel region of West Africa is experiencing an unprecedented drought, exacerbated by chronic poverty and political instability that threaten to drive the region to hunger year after year, a top U.S. Agency for International Development official said yesterday.

Assistant Administrator Nancy Lindborg said the drought is one of the longest and most geographically extensive in the last 100 years. The situation is not an anomaly, but a sign of what is to come in future years for the region.

"Drought cycles are coming faster and faster," said Lindborg, who recently returned from Mali, one of the largest countries in the region, with shaky government control since a coup in March. The two previous severe droughts in 2005 and 2010 were "not of this severity and hitting this many countries," she said.

As severe droughts become more and more frequent, Sahelians are finding it more difficult to return to normal life. Locals still feel the sting of the food price spike in 2008, and rebel militias have controlled critical routes to markets in northern Mali, said Lindborg.

"Year after year, communities are unable to get out of this cycle of crisis," Lindborg said. "We're actually seeing it get worse with these changes, so that people don't have time to recover."

The Sahel, the region between the Sahara Desert and the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, extends horizontally across eight countries and is home to about 18.6 million people.

The warning signs of trouble arose last fall, said Lindborg, as climatologists with the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) observed. Rains in the autumn season stopped falling in late September, a little earlier than necessary, said Gary Eilerts, USAID program manager for FEWS NET.

"We've been watching [the Sahel] for close to 30 years," Eilerts said. "We have built up a large body of knowledge and data on what the situation should be at different points every year."

When rain brings help, but also new problems

While recent rains may seem to bring relief, they may also encourage the spread of desert locusts, which devastate crops, said Lindborg. There are reported populations of these locusts in northern Mali, but aid workers have a difficult time transporting pest control sprays through the rebel strongholds.

"If the region remains inaccessible, even if the climate issues are not too severe, it will affect the availability of food," said Mark Yarnell, an advocate with Refugees International who visited the region earlier this year.

Yesterday, Mali's interim president announced a new national government to restore some stability in the country after the coup.

Last year, the Horn of Africa, in the eastern part of the continent, experienced a devastating famine caused by the worst drought in 60 years, affecting more than 12 million people (ClimateWire, Aug. 22, 2011).

Thanks to recent rains, USAID is unlikely to declare the Sahel officially in famine, Eilerts said. The region is currently moving out of Phase 3, the crisis phase. Phase 5 is the official declaration of famine.

"For the moment, we're hoping that things are being contained by the food aid that's going out there," he said.

USAID has committed $350 million to provide aid to the region this year. Over the past five years, the agency has paid more attention to long-term resiliency efforts, said Lindborg, like providing more diverse income opportunities for farmers and pastoralists and training growers to farm with less water.

In the aftermath of the Horn of Africa famine last summer, USAID partnered with British, E.U. and U.N. development agencies to form the Global Alliance for Drought Action in the Horn. The alliance will foster resilience in regions where the cycles of drought will become more frequent.

"Over the last five years, we've gotten smarter with our humanitarian assistance," Lindborg said. "We want to protect people from being bowled over."