Africa’s most populous country Nigeria is slow-walking towards famine on the back of international conflicts, climate shocks and insecurity driving away farmers from farmlands putting over 4.5 million people at risk for starvation, findings show.
Between the three northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, almost 4.5 million people are now at risk of hunger, says non-profit The Borgen Project. Of that 4.5 million, more than 700,000 are at imminent risk of starving to death.
Conflict remains the main driving factor of instability in northeast Nigeria as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recent report pegged internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria at over three million, the majority of whom are in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States.
The World Food Programme (WFP) in a recent article stated that Nigeria and some other countries like Yemen, and South Sudan are already faced with hard decisions, including cutting rations to be able to reach more people.
“This is tantamount to taking from the hungry to feed the starving,” the WFP said.
The food programme said up to 811 million people go to bed hungry every night, globally and the number of those facing acute food insecurity has more than doubled – from 135 million to 276 million – since 2019.
“A total of 44 million people in 38 countries are teetering on the edge of famine,” it stated.
Continuing, WFP emphasised conflict as the leading cause of hunger, with 60 percent of the world’s hungry people living in war-torn areas.
“The current events in Ukraine are yet another example of how conflict feeds hunger by displacing people from their homes and obliterating their sources of income.”
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Also, Climate shocks kill people, destroy crops, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves, displacing 30 million people worldwide by 2020, according to the WFP.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic consequences are driving hunger to new heights.
“The costs of reaching people in need are rising: the price WFP pays for food has increased by 30 percent year over year, amounting to an extra $42 million per month.”
According to the World Food Programme, there is a ring of fire stretching around the world from the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Syria, Yemen, and all the way to Afghanistan, where conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation.
“While needs are at an all-time high, resources are at an all-time low,” it said.
In addition, the WFP has predicted that it will need $18.9 billion in order to reach 137 million people by 2022.
“The gap between needs and funding is wider than ever before, with the global economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic,” WFP said. “If the necessary resources are not made available, lives will be lost and hard-won development gains will be reversed.”
The consequences of failing to invest in resilience activities will be felt across borders if communities are not equipped to withstand the shocks and stresses they face, this could lead to increased migration as well as destabilization and conflict.
Recent history has shown that when the World Food Programme ran out of funds to feed Syrian refugees in 2015, they had no choice but to leave the camps and seek help elsewhere, resulting in one of Europe’s worst refugee crises in recent history.
The WFP has however urged the government of the world and private companies to step up their levels of humanitarian and development assistance so as to continue life-saving work in emergencies and also build the ability of families and communities to feed themselves and break their dependence on humanitarian support.
Meanwhile, evidence suggests that this approach pays off. WFP and local communities transformed 272,000 acres of barren fields in the Sahel region of five African countries into productive farmland in just three years, changing the lives of over 2.5 million people and contributing to peace and stability.
WFP provided cash assistance to 145,000 people in Bangladesh in 2020, ahead of the severe flooding forecast. This enabled families to purchase food and medicine, safeguard critical assets, and transport livestock and families to safe locations, thereby avoiding losses and damages. This reduced the cost of emergency response by more than half.
“However, to achieve Zero Hunger, money is not enough,” it said. Adding that, “only political will can end the conflict in places like Yemen, Ethiopia and South Sudan, and without a firm political commitment to contain global warming as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, the main drivers of hunger will continue unabated.”
