As the conflict’s spillover leads to spiking prices in parts of Asia and Africa, WFP says keeping humanitarian supply chains open is essential to prevent millions more from tipping into food insecurity.
At a bustling food market in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, Mummy Christiana breaks down in tears as she describes how a conflict thousands of kilometres away leaves her family struggling to eat. “It’s affecting me a lot,” she says of the Middle East crisis. “With my 5,000 naira (about US$3.70), I can hardly buy anything.”
In Somalia, Mogadishu resident Aweys faces transport costs that have soared as petrol prices spike. “The same is happening with food prices – they are going up by the day,” he says.
A continent away in Myanmar, the fallout from the Middle East crisis is already reverberating across the country, with costs rising even for staples like rice – particularly in the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach areas. The added pressure comes as many communities are still struggling to recover from the country’s devastating 2025 earthquake.
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“Keeping humanitarian supply chains moving is not optional. They are literal lifelines for millions of people already on the brink of hunger.” – WFP Director of Supply Chain Corinne Fleischer
Nearly two months into a Middle East crisis with no easy exit, the strongest ripple effects are felt by the world’s poorest, most vulnerable people – some living continents away. Transport delays, port congestion and disrupted supply chains are making it much more time consuming and costly to deliver energy, fertilizer, food and medicines to where they are most needed.
Of the 45 million more people the World Food Programme (WFP) projects could tip into hunger if the conflict doesn’t end by mid-year, nearly two-thirds live in Africa and Asia. That would bring the global total to 363 million – amounting to the worst hunger crisis on record.
“The impact is clear,” says Corinne Fleischer, WFP Director of Supply Chain, of the many already struggling with the fallout. “When supply chains are disrupted, it’s felt when they cash out at the supermarket. Delays and higher transport costs push up food prices, and families who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food are the first to go without.”
At the same time, every extra dollar needed to deliver assistance reduces how many people WFP can reach, Fleischer adds. “Keeping humanitarian supply chains moving is not optional,” she says. “They are literal lifelines for millions of people already on the brink of hunger.
Long lines, rising prices
The conflict’s spillover is hitting smallholder farmers who risk fertilizer shortages and higher operational costs, translating into smaller harvests and profits. Indeed, in Asia, WFP reports anecdotal evidence that smallholders are choosing not to plant rice this season because of rising costs – contributing to worsening food insecurity. Struggling families are further tightening their belts. Relief groups like WFP are spending more time and money to deliver life-saving aid – even as humanitarian funding dries up.
The impact is already being felt in East African countries like Somalia, potentially crippling its all-important livestock exports to the Middle East, pushing up oil and food prices by up to 20 percent, and deepening an already severe hunger crisis. In some parts of Africa, supply chain disruptions in the Middle East and Red Sea are forcing food and other aid to travel around the Cape of Good Hope – driving up costs and transport times – or WFP and others to procure supplies from elsewhere.
“The shelves aren’t going to be bare. It’s jut that people won’t be able to pay for the things on the shelves.” – Moctar Aboubacar, WFP Head of Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping for East and Southern Africa
“There’s a lot of moving pieces in terms of how impacts could be felt” across East and Southern Africa, says Moctar Aboubacar, WFP Head of Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping for the region. “In the end, things are going to get more expensive. The shelves aren’t going to be bare – it’s just that people won’t be able to pay for the things on the shelves.”
In Kenya, where the Middle East crisis shrunk this year’s Ramadan meat exports, farmers are now struggling to secure ever-scarce fertilizer for their crops.
“According to news reports, people in Kenya’s North Rift food basket regions have been lining up as early as 2 am to access fertilizer – with rationing further limiting available supplies,” says Bernard Omondi, WFP Supply Chain Officer.
WFP food assistance is softening the blow for the most vulnerable. But across the region, higher prices are also impacting humanitarian missions and operations.
“Where the cost of transport is increasing, we have less money to procure food,” adds Francesco Catenacci, WFP Logistics Officer, who is based in our Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office. “And when oil prices go up, food prices will follow.”
Supporting governments
In West and Central Africa, the fallout of the Middle East conflict is only beginning to be felt, says Koffi Akakpo, WFP’s Regional Research and Assessment Advisor. But if it continues for months, it could tip 10.4 million more people into acute hunger.
“Our simulations found that if prices of a basic food basket rose by 10 percent, households would spend more than 90 percent of their budgets on food,” Akakpo says. “That means a lot of people will fall back into food and nutritional insecurity.”
At the Abuja market, food trader Gift, a mother of four, is already seeing the impact first-hand.
“We see prices rising for transport, for everything…it’s affecting us badly.” – Nigerian merchant Gift
“We see prices rising for transport, for everything,” she says, also describing her own rising expenses. “But when you try to explain that to customers, they get angry, like you’re responsible for the increases. It’s affecting us badly – but I can’t give up, because I have to feed my children.”
WFP is working with West African governments in places like Sierra Leone, on ways to prepare for potentially deeper shocks to come, says Regional Advisor Akakpo.
“If transport prices explode, operations will become much more expensive. And that needs to be taken into planning and budgets,” he says. “Countries are working on these scenarios.”
Rationing and fertilizer shortages
In Asia, heavily reliant on Middle Eastern energy imports, countries like Myanmar have similarly been seeing soaring prices for fuel, along with basic commodities like rice, palm oil and salt.
“Food prices have increased across the board – so have diesel prices, which are up by nearly 200 percent on average nationwide,” compared to before the crisis, says Takahiro Utsumi, head of WFP’s Research, Assessment and Monitoring Unit in Myanmar. The most remote and vulnerable regions, like conflict-torn Rakhine State, are facing even higher increases.
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“The cost of living is rising substantially,” Utsumi adds of a country where 12.4 million people are acutely food-insecure, “and we expect it to continue.”
Fuel shortages are leading to rationing and long queues at petrol stations. Farmers preparing for monsoon planting face shortages of imported fertilizer, raising concerns about further pressure on food production and rural livelihoods.
In Myanmar, “the cost of living is rising substantially,” says Takahiro Utsumi, WFP’s Head of Research, Assessment and Monitoring in the country
WFP is already changing the way we support one million of the hungriest people in the country, including planning for two-month distributions, sourcing food closer to those we serve, or switching to cash-base assistance to reduce transport and other operating costs.
With food prices rising and the currency falling, WFP will also ensure people get the same amount of food aid as before, Utsumi says. But without more donor funding, our response in Myanmar and elsewhere will come under growing strain at a time when needs are immense.
“If it drags on,” he adds of the Middle East conflict, “our fear is it will only add to the misery of millions of people already enduring multiple crises here. More and more lives will be pushed over the brink.”