Countries in West and Central Africa are facing a food crisis with multiple causes. Estimates in late December 2025 suggested that 41.8 million people were already in crisis or worse in October-December 2025. The number was expected to rise to 52.8 million in June-August 2026. IFPRI researchers Oliver Kiptoo Kirui and Chibuzo Nwagboso explain how serious the situation is.

Food security has three aspects:

• Chronic hunger.
• Constraints to food access.
• Acute crises.

West Africa, the Sahel, and Cameroon are in crisis, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). It is increasingly concentrated in conflict-affected corridors where markets fragment, farms are abandoned, and humanitarian access is constrained. Key areas include the Central Sahel/Liptako-Gourma region and the Lake Chad Basin.

The problem is strongly shaped by the global humanitarian financing squeeze. The WFP has warned that funding shortfalls are forcing ration reductions in countries like Mali.

Between October and December 2025, it was estimated that 41.78 million people faced food insecurity. For the June-August 2026 lean season, it is projected that 52.78 million are at risk. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s January 2026 regional update aligns with this projection.

The WFP, covering a broader “West and Central Africa” framing, has warned that June-August 2026 could see 55 million people endure “crisis hunger or worse.”

What is driving the crisis?

The crisis is best understood as layered risk:

• Conflict and governance shocks create vulnerability.
• Climate events and price spikes trigger acute deterioration.
• Weak safety nets make recovery fragile.

Conflict, insecurity and governance fragmentation

Conflict and insecurity are repeatedly identified in analysis as determinants. They shut down markets, restrict movement, displace households, and limit humanitarian reach.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis clearly describes persistent crisis-level food insecurity. This is linked to conflict dynamics and associated economic stressors.

Governance shocks can amplify market disruption. Observations noted the role of border closures and disrupted financial flows linked to ECOWAS sanctions on Niger. Political events can transmit into food access constraints.

Climate shocks and environmental stress

Cadre Harmonisé (a regional framework used for the analysis and identification of areas at risk and populations affected by food and nutrition insecurity) flagged floods as determinants as early as the 2023 cycle. It noted heavy rains damaging crops in parts of Ghana, Niger and Chad. In a region where livelihoods remain heavily dependent on rainfed agriculture and pastoral systems, even “good production years” can coexist with acute food insecurity when insecurity blocks access to fields and markets.

Economic shocks, food price inflation and market disruptions

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (2025) highlights how elevated inflation undermines purchasing power and access to healthy diets. It emphasizes that food price inflation is not just a macroeconomic variable but shapes nutrition and food security outcomes.

Displacement and disrupted livelihoods

Displacement is both a symptom and a driver. It reduces household production and income, increases dependency, and strains host-community services and markets. The current displacement burden is massive across the region’s key hotspots. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees operational data shows that the DRC has about 6.47 million internally displaced persons, Nigeria has 3.54 million, Cameroon 1.0 million and Niger 590,000.

What is the impact of a reduction in food aid?

In late 2024 and early 2025, several major humanitarian donors—including the United States and a number of European governments—announced reductions or delays in aid disbursements amid domestic fiscal pressures and competing global crises. The effects were immediate in the Sahel. By early 2025, only about 50% of the funding required for humanitarian operations in the region had been mobilized.

Funding shortages are no longer just a logistical problem for aid agencies. They are now directly contributing to rising hunger and malnutrition. When funding falls, fewer people are reached, food rations are reduced, and nutrition programs are interrupted, especially during predictable seasonal peaks when needs are highest peaks.

The WPF’s evidence from the central Sahel is unusually explicit. It reports that in Mali, where rations have been reduced due to funding shortages, the population facing crisis-level hunger has surged by 64% since 2023. In areas where full rations were maintained, the population facing crisis-level or worse hunger declined by 34%.

This suggests aid makes a big difference.

Funding constraints also reduce the region’s ability to prevent malnutrition deaths. The WFP warned in January 2026 that the region could see 13 million children suffering malnutrition and described how assistance and nutrition programming would have to be scaled down without urgent funding.

UNICEF’s Burkina Faso situation reporting is similar. It notes that food is being delivered “despite funding constraints,” even as insecurity and displacement rise.

At the system level, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting illustrates that Sahel humanitarian operations have repeatedly run with major gaps. It notes that only about half of the required funding has been mobilized for targeted assistance. A Sahel regional needs overview for 2025 warned early in the year that only 8% of required funding had been received. This very low funding at the beginning of the year makes it more likely that food and nutrition supplies will run out before the lean season begins.

What should be done?

The evidence points to an approach that combines short-term emergency response, medium-term recovery measures, and long-term structural reform.

Short-term actions

Governments and regional bodies should treat the lean season as a predictable hazard. They must allow markets to work and aid to reach people who need it.

Cadre Harmonisé repeatedly shows that crisis outcomes concentrate where markets are disrupted and movement is unsafe.

The WFP has warned that without urgent funding, millions may lose assistance. Donors can make sure nutrition-specific support is delivered in addition to general food aid and cash transfers—not replaced by them. Wasting levels are already high in several hotspot countries.

NGOs should scale up cash transfers where markets still function, and shift to in-kind where conflict isolates areas.

Medium-term actions

Governments should expand social protection that can increase quickly when prices spike or floods hit. This is key especially where most households have to buy (not grow) their food.

Regional bodies should ease trade across borders and issue early warnings. This can reduce policy uncertainty that unsettles prices.

Humanitarian and development actors should focus on livelihood recovery where people have been displaced. For example, land restoration investments can deliver large returns and reduce repeat emergency caseloads.

Long-term actions

The long-term objective is to address three constraints that keep arising: insecurity; weak services; and limited resilience in climate-sensitive food.

First, national governments and regional security mechanisms must pursue durable stabilization strategies. Agricultural recovery and market integration can’t happen where there is conflict.

Second, invest in human capital and basic services that directly reduce nutrition mortality. These include primary healthcare, safe water, and child feeding programs. UNICEF’s Burkina Faso reporting shows large caseloads of severe acute malnutrition treatment even when there isn’t talk of a “famine.”

Finally, build climate resilience. This can be done through water control, soil fertility and rangeland management, and diversified income strategies. Financing should reward prevention, not only response.

Oliver K. Kirui is a Research Fellow with IFPRI’s Development Strategies and Governance (DSG) Unit and Country Program Leader for the Nigeria and Ghana Strategy Support Programs based in Abuja, Nigeria; Chibuzo Nwagboso is a DSG Research Analyst based in Abuja. This post first appeared in The Conversation. Opinions are the authors’.