West Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia

A sliver of a country sandwiched between northern and southern Senegal, Gambia's beaches are popular among European sunseekers, many of them British. Tourism contributes one-fifth of GDP, according to the CIA Factbook.

Yet U.N. figures indicate more than a third of Gambians live on less than $1.25 a day.

Malnutrition of children under the age of five is at a 10-year high of 25 percent – 10 percent higher than the emergency threshold of 15 percent set by the World Health Organization, according to latest U.N. figures.

EAT WHAT YOU GROW

The U.N. says that some 20 million people are at risk of hunger throughout the Sahel belt stretching from Senegal to Chad, but officials were surprised to see Gambia hit so hard.

“This is a newly emerging phenomenon in Gambia because until now they have been able to manage and be food secure either through agriculture or through other means of livelihood,” said Robert Piper, U.N. coordinator for the Sahel.

Meanwhile, Gambia is pushing to be self-sufficient in the food sector by 2016, regardless of the weather in a country where 80 percent of the population depends on agriculture, said Minister for Social Welfare Omar Sey.

“We are encouraging every Gambian to grow what you eat and eat what you grow, so that we can be food self-sufficient by 2016. Rice and other commodities that can be grown in the Gambia will not be imported,” Sey told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the donor meeting.

“Gambia will no longer need to depend on rain irrigation as the government is moving to take water from the River Gambia, which divides the country in two, as a more reliable source of water.”

-Reuters