West Africa Food Crisis Deepens Across the Sahel
Recent Developments
01Late 2025 regional analysis estimated 41.78 million people in West and Central Africa were in crisis or worse, rising to a projected 52.78 million for the June-August 2026 lean season.
02WFP said it will be forced to suspend life-saving food and nutrition assistance for 2 million crisis-affected people across the Sahel and Nigeria in April due to limited funding, and it requires US$174.7 million to continue support through July 2026.
03IFPRI reported that the crisis is increasingly concentrated in conflict-affected corridors, especially the Central Sahel/Liptako-Gourma region and the Lake Chad Basin, with spillover into coastal West African countries.
04UNICEF said close to 1 million children under age 5 in the Sahel are at risk of severe wasting, reflecting a major malnutrition emergency.
Interventions
- World Food Programme emergency food and nutrition assistance across the Central Sahel and Nigeria, though portions face suspension because of funding shortfalls.
- UNICEF-supported treatment and prevention efforts for severe acute malnutrition in the Sahel region.
- Humanitarian response operations coordinated around Cadre Harmonisé/IPC-style regional analysis to target crisis-affected areas in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin.
What Works
- Emergency food assistance combined with targeted nutrition treatment reduces immediate hunger and child mortality risk in acute crises.
- Conflict-sensitive, area-targeted assistance in besieged and hard-to-reach corridors is critical because access constraints are a major driver of unmet need.
- Protection of livelihoods and agricultural inputs alongside cash or food support helps households recover in rain-fed, climate-sensitive economies.
How to Help
- Donate to organizations providing emergency food, nutrition, and logistics support in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin.
- Support advocacy for increased humanitarian funding to prevent aid suspensions.
- Share verified information from UN agencies and established humanitarian organizations to amplify the funding gap and access needs.
Make an Impact
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Verified Organizations
Organizations Helping(5)
FAO addresses the crisis by calling for urgent collective action and by supporting humanitarian response while promoting sustainable solutions. Its work in the Sahel centers on strengthening livelihoods, resilience, and food systems so vulnerable households can better withstand conflict, climate shocks, rising prices, and repeated harvest losses.
In the Horn of Africa, UNICEF responds to crop-failure-driven hunger by treating severe acute malnutrition, scaling emergency nutrition services, and reducing disease risks that worsen child hunger. It procures and delivers Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), supports safe water and sanitation, and strengthens primary health care and immunization so children can survive and recover during climate-driven food crises.
The IRC responds in the Central Sahel and surrounding regions with emergency food and other assistance, malnutrition treatment, and integrated services such as water, sanitation, health care, education, livelihoods support, and protection. Its approach combines immediate humanitarian relief for families facing extreme hunger with longer-term support to help communities recover and reduce future vulnerability.
The World Bank responds through financing that addresses both emergency food needs and structural weaknesses in food systems. In the Sahel, it has supported food-crisis operations implemented by partners such as WFP and also invested in broader measures to reduce vulnerability, linking short-term food assistance with longer-term resilience and food-system strengthening.
