Sanday Chongo Kabange, AfricaNews reporter in Lusaka, Zambia
Ten million people across West Africa are at risk of suffering from severe hunger if no immediate response is sanctioned. This has prompted a 10-member consortium of aid agencies to join calls for an end to one of Africa's biggest humanitarian challenges. They call for a 'surge' in the humanitarian effort.

They said the imminent crisis could hit the Sahel region of West and Central Africa.
The centre of the crisis is Niger, where seven million people, almost half the population do not have enough food. A further two million people in Chad, and hundreds of thousands more in Mali, Mauritania, parts of Burkina Faso and the extreme north of Nigeria are also suffering as a result of the crisis.
The agencies - including ACF, Care International, Oxfam, Save the Children and Tearfund said that new malnutrition figures underlined the need to act immediately.
The latest statistics from Niger show that nearly 17% of children under five are now suffering from acute malnutrition, over a third higher than the number last year.
A high level political response is needed to galvanize the effective and urgent delivery of aid as well as to ensure more funding said the aid agencies.
The agencies urged the United Nations to appoint a special representative for the crisis to help speed up the massive aid effort across several countries, and negotiate with governments both in the crisis-affected countries and the donor states.