New analyses of food crises in West Africa

Abstract

The issue of crisis is a central element of debate and a strategic challenge for all stakeholders in West Africa. Food and nutrition crises are recurrent in the region, with a level of intensity and high variability constituting renewed challenges. The definition, delimitation and management of these crises are provided by an established and structured professional field, which favors intervention. Different conceptual and contextual approaches can be mobilizedto account for the diversity and complexity of food and nutrition crises. Some more descriptive approaches list the causes and manifestations of these crises, while others insist on the fact that they are created, and identify their dynamic as being linked to interactions between various phenomena. To date, most of the various institutional actors involved in addressing food and nutrition crises, both at national and international levels, have favored the gradual improvement of expert systems providing technical short-term responses. In parallel, this has led to a harmonization of these frameworks of thought, which has been detrimental to the consideration of the diversity of questions and the integration of non-institutional actors. These are theboundaries and limitations that this article aims to question, in order to reinvoke the political dimension of the management of food crises (and their eventual resolution).