DAKAR, 28 July 2010 (IRIN) - More than two million Guineans do not have enough to eat, basic health services are a shambles and the country is in a fragile transition from decades of military rule, yet most aid donors do not see Guinea as an "emergency".

But the struggles of a new local NGO show the challenge of operating in a non-emergency mode while much development funding is blocked at least until an elected government is in place, anticipated in the coming weeks.

When Action Contre la Faim-Spain (ACF-E) closed its offices in southeastern Guinea in 2009, Mara Djomba and fellow local employees formed their own NGO – Centre d'Etude et d'Appui au Développement (CEAD) – “because the local population still had needs and we thought they deserved for our work to continue,” Mara told IRIN.

The needs, he said, centred on livelihoods, health and nutrition. N’zérékoré, where the NGO is based, is in Guinea’s lush Forest Region but has the highest proportion of people facing moderate and severe food insecurity at 52.7 percent, according to a 2010 World Food Programme study.

Members of the new NGO were eager to get to work, but "For the moment, many local and national NGOs' operations have slowed almost to a halt because of the donor situation," coordinator Faya Celestin Millimouno told IRIN.

"We local and national aid agencies are all waiting for this transition to be complete," he said. Even in the public sector, he said, basic health and social services have suffered from the political instability.

"Poverty has grown in Guinea in recent years as a result of the political crisis since 2006," UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) director Julien Harneis told IRIN. "Economic growth has stalled and bilateral aid has dried up."

A junta has been in power since a December 2008 coup d'état. After a tumultuous and often violent 18 months, Guineans held a presidential election on 27 June. The political transition requires long overdue legislative elections as well.

"If the country successfully holds presidential and parliamentary elections, development funds will be unblocked," Eduardo Martínez of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in Guinea told IRIN. "Without political stability there are many projects bilateral donors cannot put in place."

Food shortages

Chronic malnutrition has risen by 50 percent in the past five years, and about a quarter of Guinea's 9.8 million people are moderately or severely food insecure, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Mara, who worked for ACF-E for nine years and regularly travels around the region, said archaic farming techniques and high food prices, "with stagnant or falling incomes", were creating food shortages.

"Most families I meet eat just one meal a day ... vulnerability just grows. Studies identify needs year-in and year-out, but without adequate response the problems inevitably worsen."

CEAD's objectives are improving food security, fighting malnutrition in children and pregnant women by reinforcing the capacity of local health systems, improving access to water and educating communities about HIV/AIDS. The NGO sees community participation and reinforcing local institutions as indispensable.

ACF-E and scores of other relief agencies were based in the Forest Region in the 1990s while they assisted hundreds of thousands of refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone. In 2008-09 ACF-E, from its offices in N’zérékoré and Kissidougou, worked primarily with the local population but funding dropped off, according to Reza Kasraï, the agency's head in Guinea.

ACF-E donated vehicles and equipment to the local aid workers, and helped CEAD write proposals and approach donors. "In closing down the bases we wished to give a chance to local structures to become operational in the same sectors, including food security, nutrition and water/sanitation," Kasraï told IRIN.

The funding just has not been there, said CEAD's Mara. But a donor recently responded to one of the NGO's project proposals and wanted to meet soon, he said. "That's a good sign."