Responding to floods in Nigeria

Severe floods in Nigeria have claimed almost 200 lives and affected over 80% of the country across 12 states. For the past week, a two-person MapAction team has been in Abuja supporting the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team and the National Emergency Management Agency in their response.

MapAction has been helping with information management and needs assessments for critical food, water, shelter and healthcare supplies to ensure those affected get the help they need as quickly as possible. We’re grateful to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for funding this essential work.

Supporting Unicef in Cameroon

MapAction has sent two highly-experienced volunteers to Cameroon to support Unicef’s work with refugees in-country.

According to Unicef, the northern region of Cameroon is hosting over 66,000 refugees from Nigeria. The situation is further compounded by ongoing insecurity which is limiting people’s movements and having an adverse effect on food security. In eastern areas communities are also hosting as many as 139,000 refugees from the ongoing crisis in Central African Republic.

MapAction’s team is working in partnership with Unicef to map strategic areas for humanitarian intervention in affected regions. They will also help strengthen information management capacity in Cameroon by delivering specialist training in humanitarian mapping tools and techniques.

Emma Mumford, MapAction’s Operations Director, commented: “I am very proud that MapAction is supporting this underreported, yet acute humanitarian crisis, contributing to Unicef’s important work supporting vulnerable children in the country and in the region. I hope it will lead to further collaboration in future as the needs are clearly so great.”

[Photo: A MapAction volunteer training Unicef staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014]

Sahel preparedness mapping with UNICEF

DAKAR, 9 Feb – A severe food crisis is forecast to strike the Sahel region of West Africa later in 2012, potentially affecting 7 to 10 million people in eight countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon). Low rainfall, poor harvests and high food prices are making communities vulnerable to extreme malnutrition. The number of children dying from nutrition-related causes is already estimated at more than 490,000 per year.

MapAction has deployed a team of two volunteers to undertake a mapping preparedness project from the UNICEF regional office in Dakar, Senegal. The team will work with UNICEF information management staff to do preparatory map setup and initial vulnerability maps, with a focus on food security and nutrition.

This is MapAction’s third deployment to the Sahel region. In 2005, our volunteers helped map priority needs in a food crisis in Niger and in 2009 we responded to floods in Burkina Faso.