Madagascar is on the brink of famine

MASY, A LISTLESS three-year-old, has just sucked up a packet of Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-butter paste that donors give to malnourished children. It may save her life. Yet her grandmother, Zemele, is still gloomy. Sitting on the ground outside a clinic in Maroalopoty, a village in southern Madagascar, she describes how hard life has become. Her land has had almost no rain for three years. Sandstorms have made the soil less fertile. Masy’s parents have gone away to find work. To make ends meet, Zemele has had to sell three of her four fields. “Before, it was bad,” she says, “but not so bad.”