This humanitarian aid has been approved to address the hunger crisis in Nigeria’s conflict-affected northern region, especially in Borno state.
According to the U.S. mission to Nigeria, this funding will provide food and nutritional assistance to internally displaced individuals in the northeast, where communities have suffered from over a decade of insurgency.
The aid is anticipated to benefit more than 764,000 individuals, which includes 41,569 pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as 43,235 children.
Borno state has been the most severely impacted, with aid organizations cautioning that an “unprecedented hunger crisis” could leave 1.3 million people without food and lead to the closure of at least 150 nutrition clinics. In Maiduguri, the Italian humanitarian organization Intersos currently operates the only remaining in-patient malnutrition facility.
Margot van der Velden, the regional director for West Africa at the World Food Program, expressed concerns in July that funding shortages had forced the agency to halt food assistance in certain areas of West and Central Africa, putting millions at risk. It was projected that food supplies in Nigeria and other affected nations would deplete by September.
Additionally, northern Nigeria is grappling with escalating insecurity that has resulted in the deaths of approximately 35,000 civilians and the displacement of over two million people. Violent confrontations between farmers and herders in the northwest and north-central regions have further exacerbated the strain on food resources.