Nigeria, Africa’s largest and most-populous country, needs help feeding refugees fleeing armed conflict in the northeastern corner of the country, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in a quarterly report on food insecurity around the world.
Along with Nigeria, the FAO added Papua New Guinea and Haiti to its list of countries needing emergency food aid. The organization cited El Niño-related drought and civil conflict as primary causes of the heightened food insecurity.
Some 9.7 million people in Nigeria, Haiti and Papua New Guinea face food insecurity, according to the Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. That includes 3.4 million people in Nigeria, 2.7 million people in Papua New Guinea, where prolonged drought has withered crops, and 3.6 million people in Haiti, one-third of the population, due to the smallest cereals and starchy root production in 12 years.
In Nigeria, grain prices are up sharply this year at the same time the Nigerian currency is rapidly losing its buying power. Armed conflict with the Islamic insurgent group Boko Haram has caused “large population displacement” in northern Nigeria, along with refugees fleeing into neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Farming and marketing activities are disrupted by the ongoing conflict.
Some 37 countries around the word need assistance, said FAO, up from 34 in March. They include 13.5 million people in war-torn Syria, where harvests are forecast to drop 9 percent this year, and 14.4 million people in Yemen, where “there is a high risk that desert locust swarms will increase in hard-to-reach interior regions from early June onwards.”