La lutte contre l'insécurité alimentaire au Sahel: permanence des questionnements et évolution des approches*

Abstract

Food security is potentially uncertain and unstable throughout the rural semi-arid regions of West Africa often affected by repetitive and severe phenomenon. It is, however, still difficult to determine where and how the insecurity will next appear and which categories of population will be most exposed and vulnerable to it. At present, politicians, humanitarians and technical experts base their decisions mainly on immediate and apparent indicators in spite of the analysis of complex nature-society interactions. For the same reason, public and private interventions in the non-food crisis context are often technically and ideologically oriented rather than locally and specifically based. Since the colonial era, there has been little change in the way to tackle rural and urban food poverty and vulnerability: agricultural intensification, food shortage, food purchasing, food aid. Moreover, combined strategies aimed at reducing food insecurity prove inefficient at eradicating it as real and long term food policies no longer exist in the weak, poor and fragile States of western Africa after two decades of hotly debated economic and political adjustment. This article emphasizes the conceptual and methodological approaches currently used to investigate food insecurity for the future of the Sahel.