More than 80mn people across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Djibouti are food insecure, and almost half of them are having to sell their possessions in order to eat, according to the World Health Organisation.
With forecasters seeing a high risk of rains failing for a fifth consecutive season and aid flows falling short of what’s needed, the region is at risk of a famine, which may be worse than the one Ethiopia experienced in the 1980s and claimed an estimated 1mn lives.
For sure, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding in East Africa, which is in the grip of its worst drought in at least four decades.
The coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have compounded the continent’s woes, making it more expensive and difficult to obtain supplies of food, fuel and fertiliser.
Ever since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hunger has been increasing in almost every corner of the world, with the biggest toll coming in parts of Africa and Asia.
Worsening the crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means the food inflation that’s been plaguing global consumers is now tipping into a full-blown crisis, potentially outstripping even the pandemic’s blow and pushing millions more into hunger.
African food import bills have soared as global prices trade near a record high after Russia’s invasion sharply reduced Ukraine’s exports of grain.
Somalia’s worst drought in more than 40 years has internally displaced 1mn people since the dry conditions struck in January 2021, according to the United Nations.
This year alone, an estimated 755,000 people fled their homes in search of water, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
An infestation of locusts, which thrive in hot and dry conditions, have wiped out crops across large parts of eastern Africa.
Somalia and Ethiopia have also been contending with internal conflicts and militancy, which have disrupted farming and made it dangerous to distribute aid.
The US says it gave more than $6.6bn in humanitarian and food assistance to Africa in the first seven months of 2022, which would make it the single biggest donor.
The European Union, Canada, Sweden, Germany and the UK were also leading contributors.
The Sahel region is also confronting a hunger crisis of its own, mainly due to ongoing conflict that’s decimated food production and exacerbated the impact of higher grain prices and the pandemic.
More than 38mn people in the arid area on the southern fringe of the Sahara are food insecure, a 40% increase from a year ago, according to the Alliance for International Medical Action.
Across the world, about 1.2bn people live in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar per day, according to a 2018 WHO report.
On the flip side, the world loses about $400bn of food before it even gets delivered to stores, according to the UN.
With hunger being the most pressing reality of human lives, here is a wider perspective.
Some 5bn people would die in a modern nuclear war with the impact of a global famine - triggered by sunlight-blocking soot in the atmosphere - likely to far exceed the casualties caused by lethal blasts, according to scientists at Rutgers University.
A full-scale war between the US and Russia, the worst possible case, would wipe out more than half of humanity, they said in the study published in the journal Nature Food.
