Nearly 55 million face hunger in West and Central Africa, UN warns

Al Jazeera:

Nearly 55 million people will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months in West and Central Africa as soaring prices have fuelled a food crisis, United Nations agencies have warned.

In a joint statement on Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN children’s agency UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that the number facing hunger during the June-August lean season had quadrupled over the last five years.

It said economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.

And it noted that Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali would be among the worst affected.

The UN agencies said the prices of major staple grains had continued to rise across the region from 10 percent to more than 100 percent compared with the five-year average.

The situation was particularly worrying in northern Mali, where some 2,600 people are likely to experience catastrophic hunger, it added.

“The time to act is now. We need all partners to step up … to prevent the situation from getting out of control,” said Margot Vandervelden, WFP’s acting regional director for West Africa.

“We need to invest more in resilience-building and longer-term solutions for the future of West Africa,” she added.