Dakar, Senegal ? In Niger, a desert country twice the size of Texas, most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Forty percent of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning 5.

And that’s when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces.

To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas. They leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy.

One such economist is James Shikwati. He blames foreign aid.

“When aid money keeps coming, all our policy-makers do is strategize on how to get more,” the Kenya-based director of the Inter Region Economic Network, an African think tank, said.

“They forget about getting their own people working to solve these very basic problems. In Africa, we look to outsiders to solve our problems, making the victim not take responsibility to change.”

Niger’s descent into hunger

For 30 years after winning independence from France, Niger was ruled by coup and military dictatorship. Now it’s a peaceful multiparty democracy, but its desert is getting bigger and the drought is unrelenting.

A boy suffering from malnutrition sits up in a makeshift hospital in Maradi, Niger. Hunger is perennially a problem in Niger, but a locust invasion last year followed by drought have made the problem worse. Almost a third of Niger's population of 11.3 million is in crisis, with its children the most vulnerable. Some 800,000 children under 5 are suffering from hunger, including 150,000 faced with severe malnutrition.

All it took was the locust swarms of a year ago, the worst in 15 years, to start tipping Niger over the edge. The crop-devouring insects ravaged some 7,000 square miles of Niger farmland. The combined drought-locust onslaught cut cereal production by 15 percent last year, according to the United Nations.

At first, few noticed.

Places like Niger “were never on anybody’s radar screen. They’re not considered important, geopolitically or resource-wise,” said Cathy Skoula, executive director of U.S.-based Action Against Hunger.

In November, Niger’s government issued an emergency appeal for 78,000 tons of food. Donors, busy with higher-profile crises, barely responded.

The following month came the Indian Ocean tsunami that entirely eclipsed Africa’s misery on the world’s TV screens.

Long-term effort

Ironically, only three weeks ago the world’s attention was fixed on Africa again, when the G-8 summit pledged to double African aid to $50 billion and granted 18 of its countries debt forgiveness, including Niger. At the same time, rock concerts televised worldwide made sure Africa’s troubles stayed high on the global agenda.

A week later, TV pictures of hungry people began beaming out of Niger, and donors reached for their wallets. But the World Food Program has only raised $9 million of the $16 million it appealed for.

Aid workers say heading off famine needs long-term, steady funding.

“Prevention doesn’t sell that much,” said Stefanie Savariaud, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program in Niger’s capital, Niamey. “The world has to wait for images of dying children to react. The question is, how to mobilize the international community when it’s still preventable?”