Food and agriculture

Food came up in many speeches and side meetings in New York, but it drew little new money. By 21 September, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN's food aid agency, had received $5.41 billion for 2026. It needs $13 billion to reach 110 million people. WFP also warned that El Niño could push 49 million more people into acute hunger by the end of 2027. The UN's main food agency cannot carry Africa through the coming drought on its own.

The largest pledges of the week went to other regions. The Inter-American Development Bank committed $25 billion for 2025 to 2030 through the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. A $150 million food and climate partnership from the Green Climate Fund covers Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN fund that lends to small farmers, set out $600 million for seven countries. That includes $120 million for Ethiopia. Little of the new money was aimed at Africa, which now has more hungry people than any other region.

The most telling African pledge was small, and it came from African budgets. Ten African governments raised their pledges to IFAD for 2028 to 2030, to nearly $9 million in total. They include Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and their increases ranged from 11% to 900%. The same week, the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) noted that only 5% of humanitarian food money goes to emergency help for farming. Most emergency money feeds people after a harvest fails, and very little helps farmers plant the next one.

The UN's yearly hunger report shows that the share of Africans without enough food fell slightly in 2025, from 20.3% to 20.0%. This was the first break in a rise that began in 2017. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia, 309 million against 292 million. Across the world the number fell to 645 million. Fewer African children are stunted, meaning too short for their age because of poor food, and the continent is on track for its 2030 target. The progress is real, and one bad season could reverse it.

Cost is the main barrier. A healthy diet cost about $4.28 per person per day in 2025, using a dollar adjusted for what money buys in each country. Two in three Africans could not pay that, twice the world rate. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN's farming agency, links the high cost of healthy food to poor storage, processing, transport and cold stores. Sub-Saharan Africa was expected to spend $65 billion on imported food in 2025, including $21.9 billion on cereals. That money leaves the continent instead of paying African farmers, stores and hauliers.

Fertiliser is the second weak point. After the Strait of Hormuz, the sea route out of the Gulf, closed, urea reached $850 a tonne in April 2026. Urea is the most common nitrogen fertiliser, and the price was 80% higher than in February. The Middle East supplies nearly a quarter of the world's urea exports. About 80% of the fertiliser used in sub-Saharan Africa is imported. The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank estimate that a 10% fall in supply could cut maize, rice and wheat harvests by up to 25%. A study in Ghana, Kenya and Morocco found that farmers bought less, bought later and planted less.

Aid for food is shrinking as need grows. Money for food aid, emergency help for farmers and nutrition fell by an estimated 59% between 2022 and 2025. In January 2026, WFP said it could feed 72,000 people in Nigeria in February. In the 2025 lean season, the months before harvest when food runs short, it had fed 1.3 million. African governments cannot plan on outside food aid arriving in the next crisis.

The next shock is already forming. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) gives a nearly 100% chance that El Niño lasts from December 2026 to February 2027. A UN alert for the region puts the chance of a very strong event above 90%. It also gives a 70% chance that rain from October to December will be worse than in any El Niño year since 1950. The UN plan for early action before the drought would reach 11.9 million people through 84 measures, for $111.3 million. About 80% of it has no money, and only 13 measures have money arranged in advance. Regional forecasters expect below-normal rain across Angola, southern Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and most of South Africa. Each week without money makes it more likely that help arrives after crops have failed.

Southern Africa enters the drought with grain in store. South Africa expects a record maize crop of about 17.3 million tonnes, and forecasts exports of 3 million tonnes, 50% more than last year. Zambia harvested 4.9 million tonnes. It has 2.49 million tonnes available to export and holds 1 million tonnes in its Food Reserve Agency, the state body that buys and stores grain. The UN alert calls this a short-lived advantage that governments should use to build reserves before conditions worsen. The grain the region needs is already inside the region.

Zimbabwe shows what bad data costs. In August 2025 it banned maize imports, claiming a harvest of 2.3 million tonnes. Millers ran short, some closed, and the ban was reversed within weeks. In the season that followed, Zimbabwe bought 39% of South Africa's 2 million tonnes of maize exports. Zimbabwe and Mozambique have since started early drought action. In Malawi, the UN expects 2.6 million people to face a food crisis between October 2026 and March 2027, with cereal losses above 30% in the south. A government that trusts false harvest figures can create a shortage that the weather did not.

Nigeria shows the gap between making fertiliser and using it. The Dangote plant in Lagos makes 3 million tonnes of urea a year. A $7 billion expansion, backed by $600 million from the Africa Finance Corporation, would raise Nigeria's capacity to 9 million tonnes. By September, Nigerian urea was selling for about $492 a tonne at the port. Yet Nigerian farmers used only about 4 kilograms of fertiliser per hectare in 2023. The share of Nigerians who at times could not get enough food rose from 35% in 2015 to 75% in 2023. FAO and WFP expected 34.8 million Nigerians to face acute hunger between June and August 2026.

Ethiopia imports more than 90% of its fertiliser, and in 2025 it was short of over 400,000 tonnes of one of its main types. Dangote is building a $4 billion urea plant at Gode in Ethiopia, 40% owned by Ethiopia's state investment fund. Morocco and Egypt supply about 70% of Africa's fertiliser exports. During the shock, Morocco's state phosphate company, OCP, changed its mix of products so that it needed less sulphur. Africa already makes much of the fertiliser its farmers need, and the gap lies in getting it to their fields.

African governments have also missed their own targets. Under the African Union's last farm plan, the most recent review found no country on track. Rwanda scored best, and 30 of the 49 countries that reported were off track. African governments, as well as donors, have fallen short of what they promised farmers.

Africa's new farm plan, the CAADP Kampala Declaration for 2026 to 2035, aims to raise food output by 45% and halve losses after harvest. It also aims to triple farm trade between African countries and raise $100 billion. The trade goal starts from a weak base. Farm trade between African countries rose about threefold in twenty years, to $19.6 billion in 2023, mostly because prices rose. Over the same years, the share of Africa's farm imports bought from other African countries fell from over 20% to about 16%. The last plan also left a gap between promises and money, since only 28 of 45 national plans raised funds. Without a change in how the plan is paid for, the new targets risk the same result.

Smallholder farmers grow nearly 70% of the food in sub-Saharan Africa. When fertiliser prices, shipping routes and aid budgets are set elsewhere, these farmers are hit first. They already use about 17 to 23 kilograms of plant nutrients per hectare, against a world average of 135. In the Nairobi Declaration of May 2024, African leaders promised to triple the production of certified fertiliser in Africa by 2034. African urea now exists. What is missing is the credit, storage and regional rules to move it, and surplus maize, to African buyers before a crisis.

Timing decides the cost. Grain bought under a contract agreed before the lean season costs less than emergency imports bought after it. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has the surplus countries and the short countries inside one bloc. Its governments can agree those contracts now, while the grain is still in store.