The drought in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHoA) is predicted to continue into the late annual rainy season (Figure 1). For the first time in 40 years, four consecutive seasons of below-normal rains have been recorded in the GHoA countries.

Recent years have witnessed a growing political commitment to addressing West Africa’s high rates of maternal and child malnutrition. Despite this commitment, West Africa is not on track to achieve World Health Assembly (WHA) targets. There is a need for appropriate policy choices and program actions to generate sustained change at scale.

World hunger levels are reaching catastrophic proportions, with 44 countries suffering with serious or alarming levels of hunger, according to this 2022 Global Hunger Index.

Only 7% of appeals for urgent hunger-related funding through the UN humanitarian system are filled, leaving a hunger funding gap of 93%, according to “The Hunger Funding Gap: How The World Is Failing to Stop the Crisis,” an analysis released by Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit leader in the global movement to end hunger.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warn that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 19 countries or situations – called hunger hotspots – during the outlook period from October 2022 to January 2023. Acute food insecurity globally continues to escalate.

In Ethiopia, nearly 10 million people, including 4.4 million children, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in drought-impacted areas. Four consecutive failed rainy seasons have brought on severe drought in Ethiopia’s lowland regions of Afar, Oromia, the Southern Nations Nationalities, Peoples’ (SNNPR) and Somali regions.

The fourth edition of the IGAD Regional Focus of the Global Report on Food Crises highlights the alarming high level of acute food insecurity in 2021 in the region, where about 42 million people were estimated to be in Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above), exceeding the previous three-year high in 2020 by nearly 33 percent.

The number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to this report that provides fresh evidence that the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.

The Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment (CFSVA) was conducted from January to March 2022 against the backdrop of ongoing economic and political instability, and persistent chronic food insecurity and malnutrition.

WFP and FAO are issuing an early warning alert for urgent humanitarian action in 20 hunger hotspots where hunger is expected to worsen from June to September 2022.