Africa’s Unresolved Conflicts Drive Acute Food Insecurity

The persistence of Africa’s conflicts has directly contributed to a record 167 million Africans facing acute food insecurity with an estimated 700,000 threatened by famine.

Highlights

• An estimated 167 million Africans faced acute food insecurity in 2025–a record high. This represents the sixth consecutive annual increase in the number of Africans experiencing acute food crises.
• Conflict continues to be the primary driver of food insecurity in Africa.
• 130 million (roughly 78 percent) of those facing acute food insecurity are in countries experiencing conflict.
• After reemerging last year, famine widened its grip on the continent, affecting over 700,000 people–all of whom are in conflict zones. Famine was confirmed in multiple regions of Sudan. Parts of South Sudan and Mali may also have experienced famine-like conditions, though inaccessibility has limited data collection and reporting.

Acute food insecurity is when a person’s inability to consume adequate food puts their life or livelihood in immediate danger. This equates to a risk category of 3 or higher (crisis, emergency, and catastrophe) on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale of 1 to 5.

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Phase 1 None/Minimal

Households are able to meet essential food and non-food needs without engaging in atypical and unsustainable strategies to access food and income.

Phase 2 Stressed

Households have minimally adequate food consumption but are unable to afford some essential non-food expenditures without engaging in stress-coping strategies.

Phase 3 Crisis

Households either:

· Have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition;

or

· Are marginally able to meet minimum fod needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.

Phase 4 Emergency

Households either:

· Have large food consumption gaps which are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality;

or

· Are able to mitigate large consumption gaps but only by employing emergency livelihood strategies and asset liquidation.

Phase 4 Emergency

Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.

(For Famine Classification, an area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.)

Five Countries Account for the Bulk of Africa’s Food Insecurity

• The five countries with the largest number of people experiencing acute food security–Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Sudan–are all in conflict. Collectively, they account for almost two-thirds of the acute food insecurity in Africa.

Data Sources:FAO/WFP, FSIN, IPC/CH

• The duration of conflict in these countries is also notable, with each facing some level of armed conflict for an average of 29 years since 1990.
• This persistence of conflict not only erodes productive food production and economic capacity but also diminishes institutional, financial, and social coping systems.
• Protracted conflict also creates lingering effects on food insecurity, even when conflict is less severe. In Ethiopia, for example, the 2020 to 2022 Tigray war resulted in a spike of people facing acute food insecurity (from 8.6 million to 23.6 million). While the numbers of acutely food insecure in Ethiopia have declined since (to 15 million), they remain higher than the pre-2020 levels.
• While concentrated in 5 countries, 20 African countries have at least 10 percent of their populations facing acute food insecurity. This includes countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Somalia, Malawi, Chad, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Burundi, and Guinea. While some of the southern African countries are recovering from El Niño-induced drought during 2023 and 2024, acute food insecurity in the others is largely driven by conflict and political instability.

Data Sources: FAO/WFP, FSIN, IPC/CHRegional Conflict Zones Amplify Food Insecurity

• Four of the five countries with the largest number of people experiencing acute food insecurity–the DRC, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan–are neighbors.
• This contiguous pattern of countries experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity extends across the continent from the Western Sahel to Somalia.
• These regional linkages underscore the spillover effects from political instability and conflict. The clustering of conflicts also strains regional coping capacities. Transportation arteries to support food supplies and humanitarian assistance are cut, limiting access to vulnerable populations. Populations displaced from one conflict must often flee into another conflict-affected country.

(Click for printable PDF version of map)

• The transcontinental band of acute food insecurity traverses Africa’s regional groupings, highlighting the breadth of the challenge. East Africa hosts the largest share of Africa’s acute food insecure population (57.9 million people, or 35 percent of the continental total). This is followed by West Africa (47.4 million, 28 percent), Central Africa (38.2 million, 23 percent), and Southern Africa (23.5 million, 14 percent).
• West Africa has experienced a relatively more accelerated deterioration in its levels of acute food security in recent years, largely as a result of ongoing conflicts in Nigeria and the Sahel.

Data Sources: FAO/WFP, FSIN, IPC/CHFamine is a Manmade Disaster

• Already more than 600,000 people are known to have been exposed to famine-like conditions in Sudan. Due to the intensity of the conflict, many areas remain inaccessible, especially in the Darfur region controlled by the RSF. Consequently, the number of people facing famine could be far higher.
• South Sudan has been experiencing famine-like conditions due to conflict, displacement from the Sudanese conflict, and climate shocks. Renewed fighting has displaced more than 325,000 people, mostly from Jonglei and Upper Nile States, where roughly 83,000 people have experienced catastrophic levels of food insecurity this year.
• In Mali, levels of acute food insecurity have been rising as the militant Islamist insurgency has expanded. This includes the emergence of people experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity in Ménaka since March 2023. Given the challenges of accessibility and repression of independent media by the ruling military junta, levels of famine may be significantly worse.

“Great Famines” in Africa since 1980

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