UN: Thousands in West, Central Africa could face starvation

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — More than 25,000 people could face starvation in conflict-plagued parts of West Africa next year, a United Nations official warned Friday.

Federico Doehnert of the World Food Program said violence and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine are largely driving the threat to people in Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso.

“One of the most striking things is that where we already had issues with severe food insecurity last year, this year we're seeing a further deterioration” Doehnert said in Dakar while presenting findings from the latest food security report by regional governments, the UN and aid groups.

The cross-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is the epicentre of West Africa's escalating humanitarian crisis, which is compounded by climate change, severe floods and droughts placing more than 10 million people in need of assistance, the UN said in a statement this week.

Doehnert said nearly 80 per cent of people facing catastrophic hunger - some 20,000 - are in Burkina Faso's Sahel region, where jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have besieged cities and cut off assistance. Residents of the city of Djibo have been blockaded for months, unable to access their farms.

“We only get food when convoys come. Unfortunately, they are not coming on a regular basis,” Sidi Dicko, a resident of Djibo, told The Associated Press by phone. “We pray for God to help us out of this situation.”

Dicko said the little food that arrives gets through with military convoys, which often are attacked on the road. Aid groups need to use helicopters to transport food, which is costly.

Doehnert said that in Mali, where violence has been ongoing for a decade, 1,700 people will face catastrophic levels of hunger.

In the last quarter of the year, Benin, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Togo experienced a 20 per cent increase in food insecurity compared with 2021, according to the food security report. Some 25 million people in Nigeria face moderate or worse food insecurity, the report states.

At a US-Africa summit this week, the United States announced $2 billion in emergency aid and medium- to long-term food security assistance for African countries. 

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