I’d like to suggest three initiatives which would improve the lives of millions of Nigeriens at risk immediately: That the Nigerien government suspends its capital expenditure program to make funds available for emergency relief; That foreign oil companies producing in Niger’s new field, China’s CNPC and Algeria’s Sonatrach, defer cost recovery claims by enough to allow all necessary emergency supplies to be bought; That the governments of the Sahel region, where up to ten million people are going hungry again this year, create a regional stabilisation fund using petrodollars from new and established industries in Chad, Mauritania and Niger...It would be obscene for Nigeriens to die of starvation in areas where a pipeline pumped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil...past the queues at the clinics and their devastated villages to a refinery and then out to the world... The new producers of West Africa have more than enough oil reserves booked and fields in production to set up a stabilisation fund now which could offer rapid response in-region help to the humanitarian crises that keep hitting the Sahel.