Horn of Africa Hunger Crisis

• The Horn of Africa has, in recent years, experienced its worst drought in 40 years. The devastation wrought by the 2020-2023 drought crisis will be acutely felt for years to come.
• In August 2024, continued above-average rainfall constituted the wettest season of the 40-year historical record in parts of Sudan and Ethiopia, resulting in severe flooding. In Greater Darfur and the northeast of Sudan, more than 170,000 people were displaced, and over 130 people were killed in the collapse of the Arba’at Dam.
• With nearly 64 million people in need of humanitarian and protection assistance across the Horn of Africa, the region accounts for close to 22% of global humanitarian needs in 2024.
• FEWS Net estimates that over 50 million people need humanitarian food assistance in the East Africa region through September 2024. Agricultural production is anticipated to somewhat alleviate food assistance needs in some areas by October 2024, but 40-50 million people will likely continue to need assistance through January 2025.

According to FEWS NET’s East Africa Food Security Outlook for July to September 2024: “In the Eastern Horn, La Niña conditions are expected in late 2024, likely resulting in below-average rains. If the late 2024 rainy season were to fail, then acute food insecurity outcomes would likely deteriorate further than currently projected in early 2024, given the relatively short recovery period since the historic drought.”  

Needs remain elevated in East Africa. In Sudan, famine is ongoing in Zamzam camp in North Darfur with another 13 areas at risk.

According to WHO, the food crisis in the region is also a health crisis. In addition to severe malnutrition, disease outbreaks including cholera, measles, malaria, dengue fever and others, are rampant, exacerbated by conflict, drought, flooding, displacement and limited access to health care. Flood-affected areas in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya have experienced a surge in water and vector-borne diseases.

The interconnection between climate, conflict and food security is more prominent in fragile or developing contexts, creating a vicious cycle that destabilizes communities. Logistic and security challenges often impede humanitarians’ access to affected people. State and non-state actors can obstruct access in the region. The Institute for Economics and Peace’s Ecological Threat Report, released in November 2023, found that a 25% rise in food insecurity increases the risk of conflict by 36%.

Countries in the region are currently experiencing high levels of political violence and instability, including the al-Shabaab insurgency in Somalia, militia and Islamist militant activity in Kenya, and the civil conflicts in Ethiopia and Sudan:

• In Somalia, al-Shabaab Islamist insurgents continue to wage a nearly two-decade campaign against Somali forces, controlling large portions of central and southern Somalia and launching deadly attacks on Mogadishu and in Kenya.
• In Ethiopia, a peace deal signed by the government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in November 2022 ended a brutal two-year war that displaced millions and created dire humanitarian conditions in the Tigray region. However, recovery and the resumption of services there will take time as conditions are exacerbated by volatile climate conditions and extended drought. For more, see our Ethiopia Humanitarian Crisis profile.
• Sudan is experiencing “the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet.” Since the start of the conflict in April 2023, the country now faces the worst levels of acute food insecurity in its history, with more than half of its population – 25.6 million people – in acute hunger, and more than 8.5 million people facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC 4). Over 10 million people have been displaced and more than 75% of health facilities are non-functional in conflict-affected states. More information is provided in our Sudan Humanitarian Crisis profile.

As of June 2024, the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes (EHAGL) region was host to 5.4 million refugees and asylum-seekers, and 20.8 million people internally displaced by conflict and climate-related disasters. The displacement caused by the conflict in Sudan is the largest humanitarian emergency in the region, having displaced more than 10 million people, including more than 7 million new IDPs and at least 2 million refugees and returnees in neighboring countries.

“The conflict in Sudan has triggered the world’s largest crisis, with more than half the population struggling to put enough food on their plates every day. Violence and insecurity have driven millions of people to seek refuge within their own country and in neighboring countries which are already grappling with high levels of food insecurity and instability. This is putting even more pressure on limited humanitarian resources,” says Rukia Yacoub, Deputy Regional Director for Eastern Africa, World Food Programme.

IOM calls the Horn of Africa one of “the busiest and riskiest migration corridors in the world” due to hundreds of thousands of people traveling in an irregular manner, often relying on smugglers to facilitate movement along the Eastern Route through Djibouti and the Southern Route through Kenya.

The impacts of the 2020-2023 drought are expected to keep depleting the resources in host countries, limiting their ability to support migrants along the routes and driving more people to migrate irregularly.

The Horn of Africa is still grappling with the lingering effects of the worst drought in 40 years and the impact of floods that happened in the second half of 2023, which further eroded fertile lands and killed remaining livestock. Recovery is expected to take between half to nearly a decade for those who lost between 80% and 100% of their livelihood.

The prolonged drought has damaged soil, making it challenging to absorb the rain to grow crops. Caroline Wainwright, a climate scientist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, said the flooding does not simply undo three years of drought.

Early warning systems designed to warn against various hazards would help with limiting the impacts of climate-fueled disasters in the long run. According to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Countries with substantial to comprehensive early warning system coverage have one-eighth the disaster mortality of those with limited or no coverage. Sadly, only 40% of Africa is covered by such systems, and even those are compromised by quality issues.”

According to UNOCHA, “Millions of children and women’s lives are at heightened risk of death and other long-term consequences due to high rates of malnutrition. Acute food insecurity, conflict, and a high prevalence of infectious diseases are contributing to high rates of malnutrition, aggravated by El Niño-induced flooding in 2023 and the lingering effects of the drought.”

Across the broader Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region (which includes Uganda and Djibouti), there are 11.4 million acutely malnourished children under 5 years of age, of which 2.8 million are suffering the most severe form of wasting. Women and children make up the majority of the displaced populations in Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. Persistent underlying drivers of acute malnutrition among women and children, including lack of food, inadequate services, and poor infant and young child feeding practices, continue to be exacerbated by escalating conflicts, economic shocks, and the effects of weather extremes like the 2020-2023 drought.