The UN on Tuesday suggested a record 49.5 million people will go hungry in West and Central Africa next year due to conflict, climate change and high food prices, Reuters reports.
This figure is 4 per cent higher than in 2023. In coastal countries, the number of people suffering from acute hunger will reach 6.2 million in 2024, up 16% from this year, according to a new regional food security analysis published by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and other humanitarian organisations. Margot Vandervelden, WFP’s acting regional director for Western Africa, noted:
Acute hunger remains at record levels in the region, yet funding needed to respond is not keeping pace. Insufficient funding means the moderately hungry will be forced to skip meals and consume less nutritious food, putting them at risk of falling back into crisis or emergency phases, perpetuating the cycle of hunger and malnutrition.
More than two out of three households in West and Central Africa cannot afford a healthy diet, according to a published analysis. The cost of a daily nutritious diet in the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – is 110 per cent higher than the minimum daily wage in the region.
According to the UN, an Islamist insurgency is active in the Sahel, displacing some four million people from their homes and farms. Some seven million people have been displaced by the ongoing multiple conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Sahel crisis is forcing people to seek refuge in neighbouring coastal countries such as Ivory Coast, Togo and Ghana, which is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation. Ollo Sib, a senior research adviser for the WFP, noted:
Almost 80% of people who are currently in a difficult food situation are in areas affected by conflict.
He warned that without the intervention of international organisations, the situation could deteriorate further in some areas, as more than 2.6 million people risk starvation.
