U.S. Approves $32.5m Aid to Nigeria Over unprecedented Hunger Crisis

  

The United States has approved $32.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Nigeria to help ease a deepening hunger crisis that has left millions at risk in conflict-affected regions.

The U.S. mission in Abuja said on Wednesday that the funding would provide food and nutritional support to more than 764,000 people across Nigeria’s northeast and northwest, where insurgency and communal violence have devastated livelihood.

The intervention comes amid warnings from the World Food Programme (WFP) that northern Nigeria is in the grip of “an unprecedented hunger crisis”. In July, WFP’s West Africa regional director, Margot van der Velden, cautioned that more than 1.3 million people could go without food, while 150 nutrition clinics in Borno State faced closure due to funding cuts.

WFP had already suspended food assistance across several West and Central African countries earlier this year as aid budgets dwindled, leaving millions without emergency relief. Food stocks in the region were projected to run out by September.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is battling multiple security challenges: insurgency in the northeast that has killed 35,000 civilians and displaced over 2 million people, as well as farmer-herder conflicts and banditry in the northwest and north-central regions. In June, at least 150 people were killed in one such attack in the north-central zone.

The U.S. aid marks a rare policy shift following years of reduced foreign assistance after former President Donald Trump suspended most funding through USAID.

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