West Africa: 41.8 million people face acute food insecurity

Senegalese Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Minister Omar Ba said 41.8 million people were facing acute food insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel, including more than 1.4 million in the emergency phase, according to APS. The figures were presented in Dakar at the opening of the fourth meeting of the management committee of ECOWAS’s Regional Food Security Reserve, held over two days.

The December 2025 Harmonised Framework recorded 41.8 million people affected. Projections cited by Omar Ba estimate that 52.2 million people could be affected during the lean season, between June and August 2026. Other regional estimates put the risk at nearly 52.8 million.

The Regional Reserve’s cereal stock exceeds 69,000 tonnes, compared with an initial target of 400,000 tonnes. Its executive director, Konlani Kanfitin, said the mechanism had carried out 27 interventions since its creation and that millions of people had benefited from its cereals. He called for storage capacity to be strengthened in member states, the transit of cereals between countries to be facilitated and more resources to be mobilised, particularly to make the Reserve’s financial component fully operational.

The meeting is to examine and approve the Reserve’s 2027 budget programme, as well as the plan to mobilise the resources needed for its operation. Declining humanitarian funding and continuing conflicts are complicating the response. In addition, the African Development Bank announced more than $300 million for the second phase of the Programme to Strengthen Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel (P2RS).