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The United Nations World Food Programme (UN-WFP) has issued a stark warning that over 52 million people across West and Central Africa are at risk of acute hunger between June and August, marking one of the most severe food crises in the region’s recent history.
In its latest regional assessment, WFP reports that 36 million people are already struggling to meet basic food needs.
The crisis is being driven by a deadly combination of conflict, mass displacement, economic shocks, rising food and fuel prices, and increasingly extreme weather patterns.
Nearly three million people are already experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity, while 2,600 people in Mali are at risk of catastrophic hunger—the highest classification of food insecurity, typically associated with famine conditions.
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WFP officials say that unless immediate funding is secured, food assistance will be drastically reduced.
“We will be forced to scale down even further both in the number of people reached and the size of food rations distributed,” Margot van der Velden warned.
In the Sahel, hunger has exploded from just 4% of the population in 2019 to 30% today. According to Ollo Sib, a senior WFP research adviser, the situation is “extremely dire.”
In northern Ghana, farmers have been forced to replant multiple times due to persistent drought, made worse by soaring prices of seeds and fertilisers.
Meanwhile, in northern Mali, pastoralist communities face rising food costs—up 50% compared to the five-year average—with no access to markets.
More than 10 million people in the region have been displaced by violence, including two million refugees in Chad, Cameroon, Mauritania, and Niger, and eight million internally displaced—mainly in Nigeria and Cameroon. This massive displacement has shattered livelihoods and access to food.
WFP stated that economic instability and climate shocks are compounding the devastation.
The WFP is urgently appealing for $710 million to sustain operations through October 2025, aiming to reach nearly 12 million people across West Africa and the Sahel.
So far, the agency has reached three million of the most vulnerable—including malnourished children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, refugees, and displaced persons—but warns that up to five million people risk being cut off from aid if funding does not materialize soon.
Beyond emergency relief, WFP is calling for long-term investments in food systems and resilience-building. Since 2018, its regional initiatives have rehabilitated over 300,000 hectares of land, supporting four million people across more than 3,400 villages.
