Geneva: A severe food crisis is looming in West and Central Africa, where around 52 million people are expected to struggle with food and nutritional insecurity during the upcoming lean season, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The lean season, which stretches from June to August, is the period between harvests when food availability typically drops to its lowest.
In its latest food security assessment, the WFP warned that nearly three million individuals across the region are projected to reach emergency levels of hunger (Phase 4), while 2,600 people in Mali may experience catastrophic hunger, the most extreme classification on the WFP’s five-tier scale.
Multiple factors are fueling the crisis, including ongoing armed conflicts, worsening economic conditions, and intensifying climate shocks. Food prices have surged, especially in countries like Ghana, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, where rising fuel costs have compounded inflation. Meanwhile, regions such as the central Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, and the Central African Republic have been hit by recurrent extreme weather.
The humanitarian impact of conflict remains staggering. The WFP reported that over 10 million people have been displaced across the region, including eight million internally displaced in Nigeria and Cameroon alone.
Notably, the figures exclude the Democratic Republic of Congo, where violence has sharply escalated in 2025. In eastern Congo, fighting involving Rwandan-backed M23 rebels has displaced millions and pushed 28 million people into acute hunger—an all-time high. Since December alone, an additional 2.5 million Congolese have become food insecure, according to a joint report by the WFP and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released in March.
