A staggering 52 million people across West and Central Africa will struggle to access food during the coming lean season, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.
Between June and August, when harvests dwindle and food supplies run low, nearly three million people will face emergency levels of hunger.
In Mali alone, 2,600 people are expected to endure catastrophic hunger, the most severe level of food insecurity, according to the WFP’s latest report.
The crisis is being driven by intensifying conflict, increasingly erratic weather patterns, and deteriorating economic conditions across the region.
Food inflation, fuelled by soaring fuel prices, is hitting households hard in countries such as Ghana, Guinea, and Ivory Coast.
Recurrent droughts and floods have ravaged crops and livelihoods in the central Sahel, around the Lake Chad Basin, and in the Central African Republic.
Conflicts have uprooted over 10 million people across the region, including eight million internally displaced in Nigeria and Cameroon alone.
While the new analysis excludes the Democratic Republic of Congo, recent data shows 28 million people there face acute hunger.
Violence in eastern Congo has surged since December, with Rwandan-backed M23 rebels advancing, pushing 2.5 million more people into severe food insecurity.
WFP uses a five-phase scale to measure food insecurity, ranging from Phase 3 (crisis) to Phase 5 (catastrophe or famine).
The agency’s warning underscores the urgent need for international support to prevent a deepening humanitarian disaster.