The head of the unit's emergency provisions department, Boubacar Allakasso, said the government was preparing to send aid to the rural areas affected.

In return, beneficiaries will have to join work schemes helping to repair degraded land, dredge ponds or rebuild roads. Last year Niger recorded a surplus of 457,237 tonnes of cereal, thanks to unusually good rains and a reprieve from the parasites that often destroy harvests.

But the ministry of rural development said almost two million people would still go hungry in 2007 because shortages remained in certain areas.

The Niger authorities were forced to draw heavily on the country's emergency grain stocks in 2005, after poor harvests damaged by five years of drought and attacked by plagues of locusts left about 3.2 million people without food.

In February, the European Union donated six million euros (eight million dollars) to help replenish grain stocks in the impoverished country.

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