Torrential floods in West Africa hurt food security

FILE PHOTO: Souloukna Mourga, 50, who has been a farmer for more than 35 years and lost two hectares of cotton and one of millet due to flooding, plods through his submerged red millet field in Dana, Cameroon October 25, 2022. REUTERS/Desire Danga Essigue

DANA, Cameroon (Reuters) - Souloukna Mourga plodded through his flooded millet and cotton field in northern Cameroon and uprooted soggy stems that had a few bolls on them. All six hectares of mostly dead crops were under water.

The 50-year-old father of 12 is one of an estimated 4 million people, many of them small subsistence farmers, in over a dozen countries in West and Central Africa that have seen their crops decimated by unusually heavy flooding.