Food Crisis: Nigeria, Sudan among 10 countries home to world’s most hungry – UN report

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Two-thirds of people facing food crises globally last year lived in just 10 countries, with a third of them in Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN-backed yearly report said Friday.

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Conflict remained the main driver of acute food insecurity, according to the Global Report on Food Crises, based on data from the United Nations, the European Union and humanitarian agencies.

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And with conflicts and climate extremes “likely to sustain or worsen conditions in many countries”, the outlook for 2026 is “bleak”, it said.

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“Acute food insecurity remains highly concentrated (in) 10 countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen,” the report said.

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Improvements in some countries, such as Bangladesh and Syria, were “almost fully offset by notable deteriorations” in Afghanistan, DRC, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, it said.

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For the first time in the report, which is in its 10th edition, famine was confirmed in two separate contexts — in Gaza and parts of Sudan — in the same year.

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Around 266 million people in 47 countries or territories experienced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the share recorded in 2016, the report said.

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It also warned about the sharp decline in international aid and said the Middle East war risked aggravating existing crises by increasing the numbers of displaced in a region already hosting millions of refugees, and driving up fertiliser costs.

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The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil supply route, has sent fertiliser prices soaring since they rely on oil-based inputs.

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“Now we’re in planting season,” Alvaro Lario, head of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told AFP.

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“So for sure this current food shock — both with the energy prices going up and also fertilisers going up — I think it’s going to have a massive impact in terms of production,” Lario said.

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He called for more help to small-scale farmers, for example by investing in water- and climate-resilient crops.

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Crises could be eased by farmers producing fertiliser locally as well as improving soil health so that less of it is needed, he added.

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IFAD is also working on boosting investment by local private sectors.

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“Creating the instruments and incentives for the local private sector… is a very important way of making that sustainability and that development money go a longer way,” Lario said.

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