Food Systems

Escalating gang violence in Haiti has severely disrupted food production, markets, and supply chains, affecting 5.7 million people—over 51% of the population—in acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or worse) as of early 2026, with projections reaching 5.9 million by March 2026. Gang control over ports, roads, farmland, and key agricultural regions like Artibonite (80% of rice production) has led to farmland abandonment, extreme price inflation, and restricted humanitarian access, pushing 1.9 million into Emergency (IPC 4) levels and 600,000 facing famine conditions.

Food insecurity across the Central Sahel and wider West Africa remains severe and is deteriorating as conflict, displacement, climate shocks, inflation, and market disruptions continue to undermine livelihoods. The World Food Programme says the conflict in the Sahel is driving hunger in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger, and that an estimated 3.5 million people in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Nigeria remain trapped in besieged areas cut off from assistance. WFP also warns that 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 because of limited funding, highlighting how underfunded response plans are worsening the crisis. Recent regional analysis cited by IFPRI says 41.78 million people were already in crisis or worse in West and Central Africa during October-December 2025, with the number projected to rise to 52.78 million during the June-August 2026 lean season. The crisis is concentrated in the Central Sahel/Liptako-Gourma region and the Lake Chad Basin, and it is also spreading into coastal countries such as Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Benin, and Togo. UNICEF says close to 1 million children under age 5 in the Sahel are at risk of severe wasting, while ECHO says more than 17% of the Sahel’s population of 98 million needs humanitarian assistance.

The Horn of Africa is facing a renewed food-security shock, but the latest evidence points to a mix of extreme dryness and localized flood impacts rather than a single El Niño-driven event. FEWS NET reported in December 2025 that the eastern Horn was experiencing one of the driest October-December rainy seasons on record, with widespread moisture deficits, failed or near-failed seasons, and crop losses severe enough that some areas saw non-irrigated harvests projected at less than 10% of average in Somalia’s Bay and Bakool regions. The report said Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia were all seeing widespread Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes, while parts of Somalia were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4). Country-level impacts remain severe. Concern Worldwide reported that the 2021-23 drought was the worst in the Horn since 1981 and left over 31.9 million people in need of humanitarian aid, including more than 23.5 million facing acute food insecurity; it also said at least 6.5 million people were facing high levels of hunger across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, including about 2.1 million in Kenya and 3.4 million in Somalia, with Somalia projected to rise to 4.4 million by the end of 2025. The same source noted almost 742,000 children under five and more than 109,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women were acutely malnourished and in urgent need of treatment. CARE’s reporting on the 2023 floods also shows how quickly climate shocks compound risk in the region: floods linked to intense rainfall killed more than 230 people and displaced hundreds of thousands across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, with Somalia alone reporting 99 deaths and more than 695,000 displaced and Ethiopia over 760,000 displaced.

Madagascar has faced a long-running migratory locust problem that can rapidly damage crops, pasture, and livelihoods, but the sources provided do not show a clearly documented 2025–2026 escalation. Historical FAO and UN reporting describes the country’s locust plague as threatening food security for millions of people, with infestations capable of spreading to roughly two-thirds of the island in severe episodes. Earlier assessments also noted that control programs targeted about 2 million hectares of infested areas to prevent further spread and protect staple production and grazing land. The most recent evidence in the provided results indicates that the crisis remains most dangerous for rural households in Madagascar’s agricultural and pastoral zones, where losses to rice, maize, cassava, fodder, and livestock can quickly deepen food insecurity. However, the search results do not provide new 2025–2026 statistics on swarm extent, affected population, or economic losses. Because of that, the most defensible current assessment is that the risk remains significant and structural, but the verified near-term trend cannot be confirmed from the supplied sources alone.