West Africa Sahel Food Crisis Deepens
Recent Developments
01January 26, 2026: FAO said 41.8 million people in West Africa and the Sahel were already in Crisis or worse, with projections rising to 52.8 million in the June-August 2026 lean season.
02April 29, 2026: A Sahel humanitarian overview reported that 24.4 million people would need assistance in 2026 and that only 19% of the required US$3.7 billion had been funded by April.
03June 2026: FEWS NET reported that conflict is driving Emergency and Crisis conditions across the region, with 500,000 to 749,999 people expected to need humanitarian food assistance between June 2026 and January 2027.
Interventions
- FAO and WFP are jointly briefing donors and governments on the worsening lean-season outlook and urging urgent food, nutrition, and livelihood support.
- Humanitarian agencies are prioritizing targeted food assistance, cash and voucher transfers, and nutrition support for children and other high-risk groups across the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin.
- Regional response plans are focusing on conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, and northeastern Nigeria.
What Works
- Targeted emergency food assistance and cash transfers help households bridge lean-season shortages and protect access to food when markets still function.
- Nutrition treatment for children under 5, especially screening and treatment for severe wasting, is critical in high-risk Sahel settings where malnutrition is rising.
- Livelihood support for farmers and pastoralists, including seeds, animal health services, and recovery assistance, helps reduce repeated dependence on emergency aid.
How to Help
- Donate to organizations responding to food insecurity in the Sahel, including UN agencies and trusted humanitarian NGOs.
- Support emergency nutrition and food assistance programs for children, displaced families, and conflict-affected communities.
- Advocate for increased humanitarian funding and access to conflict-affected areas through governments and aid donors.
Make an Impact
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Verified Organizations
Organizations Helping(9)
Concern Worldwide works in Sahel-affected countries such as Mali with nutrition treatment, emergency food assistance, livelihoods support, and resilience programming. Its model combines immediate assistance for malnourished children and crisis-affected families with support to farming, income generation, and community recovery.
Christian Aid is actively responding in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso by funding early intervention with local partners, distributing seeds to help farmers grow food during drought, providing rice and grains to displaced families, and offering food and nutrition education for pregnant women and mothers of young children.
CARE’s strategy is built around delivering large-scale humanitarian and development programming through a confederation model that works with partners in many countries. Its program structure shows an integrated approach: emergency response is paired with health, food and water, economic empowerment, climate resilience, and gender equality rather than treating them as separate problems. This is reflected in CARE’s reported 2025 reach across 121 countries and 1,467 projects, with major participation numbers across multiple program areas.[2][7] A defining feature of CARE’s approach is that it centers women and girls as a pathway to broader community change. CARE’s program portfolio explicitly groups work around women’s economic participation and gender equality, suggesting that social norms, power imbalances, and access to resources are treated as core drivers of poverty and crisis vulnerability. CARE also operates in humanitarian coordination spaces such as the Global Health Cluster, indicating that it combines direct service delivery with system-level coordination in emergencies.[5][7] CARE’s work is therefore not only about delivering aid, but about combining immediate relief with longer-term resilience and structural change. Its stated program mix shows an operational model that links crisis response to recovery, health access, food and water security, and economic inclusion, allowing the organization to address both urgent needs and the underlying causes of vulnerability.[2][7][8]
Mercy Corps says it works alongside communities to provide rapid relief in disasters, manage the effects of conflict and climate change, and create lasting solutions so people can thrive. Its strategy is not limited to direct aid: it combines humanitarian response with longer-term development, governance, market, and resilience programming across more than 30 countries.[6] A distinctive feature of its model is that programming is organized around interconnected drivers of vulnerability, such as food insecurity, weak governance, social exclusion, and climate stress. In its peace and governance work, Mercy Corps explicitly uses a multi-level approach that addresses societal, community, and individual dynamics through social cohesion, behavior change, civil society strengthening, mediation, and evidence learning.[2] Mercy Corps also emphasizes flexible tools such as cash and voucher assistance, market development, and technology, which are intended to help local systems function rather than replace them. This suggests a theory of change focused on restoring agency and strengthening the systems people rely on, rather than only delivering one-time services.[6]
