Photojournalist and radio presenter SHAFIQ MORTON accompanied the South African relief organization, Gift of the Givers Foundation, on a recent aid mission to famine-struck Niger. Led by Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman, the delegation of doctors, nurses and journalists oversaw the distribution of 36 tons of food and medicine. Here he recounts the plight of the people of Niger.

“Shafiq, is your passport ready We need a ‘senior-journalist’ to travel urgently.” Munadia, my program manager sounded positively chirpy. For just a moment, thoughts of Baghdad crossed my mind. “Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman of the Gift of the Givers is heading to Niger,” she told me. Dr. Sooliman is the livewire CEO of Africa’s only indigenous, “proudly South African” relief organization. The Gift of the Givers (also known as Waqful Waqifin) is an NGO with a reputation for doggedness and delivery. Dr. Sooliman’s website proclaims inspiration from the Jerrahi Sufi order, with Gift of the Giver’s operational credo deriving from the Qur’anic adage: “[The] best among people are those who benefit mankind.” Non-sectarian in outreach, the Gift of the Givers cut its teeth in Bosnia, and moved on to poverty relief and development programs in southern Africa. It also operated in more than 20countries, including Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Relieved that I wasn’t on the plane to a war zone, my ears pricked up. I’d never done an aid story before. We’d already been following wire service dispatches, especially from the BBC, that Niger was suffering from a famine in which up to 3million people were affected.
I spoke to international relief agencies, Oxfam and Muslim Hands, who confirmed this, as had Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), who pointed fingers at a slothful United Nations, as well as structural pressure foisted upon the country’s leaders by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.