The United Nations World Food Programme has appealed for $89 million to keep food and nutrition assistance flowing across northern Nigeria over the next six months, warning that the country's food security crisis is deteriorating faster than previously projected, according to Premium Times. The agency said conflict has driven hunger in parts of the north to levels not seen in almost a decade.
Seventeen Million and Rising
The latest Cadre Harmonisé analysis shows that more than 17 million people across nine conflict-affected northern states are experiencing crisis, emergency or catastrophic levels of hunger, an increase of almost two million since the previous projections, as Nairametrics reported. Nationally, the number of food insecure people has climbed to 36.2 million, according to the World Food Programme.
A Crisis Moving Outward
The WFP Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Kinday Samba, told Premium Times that what worries the agency most is "how this crisis is expanding", noting that violence once concentrated in parts of the north east now stretches across a far wider area, forcing people off farmland and restricting humanitarian access. The number of locations that frontline staff cannot reach has doubled, with another 15 areas now partly inaccessible, Premium Times noted.
Aid Alone Will Not Fix It
Without additional funding beyond September, the agency may be forced into deeper cuts and tighter targeting of who receives help, according to CNBC Africa. The same report noted the agency's position that emergency food aid is only a first step, and that lasting solutions require peace, stronger agricultural production and investment in supply chains, with the private sector, government and investors all playing a larger role.
When farmland in the north empties out, the effects travel down the supply chain to markets hundreds of kilometres away. FoodPrices Nigeria tracks verified retail prices across Lagos markets, where disruptions in the country's main growing belt eventually reach the shopper.