Three storms at once
Today is World Food Day. This year it finds African farmers caught between three storms at once: a super El Niño, a war in Europe and a war in the Gulf.
None of these storms began in Africa. Africa did not heat the Pacific Ocean. It did not start the war in Ukraine or the war around the Strait of Hormuz. Yet it is African farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and families who will pay the highest price, in empty granaries, dead livestock and children going to bed hungry.
That is what I want to say plainly today. These crises are not creating Africa’s vulnerability. They are exposing it. And that vulnerability was not an accident. It was built.
A super El Niño that hits Africa hardest
The El Niño now under way is one of the strongest on record. The World Food Programme warns it could push at least 49 million more people into acute hunger by the end of 2027. Around 24 million of them are in Africa: more than 18 million in East and Southern Africa, and nearly 6 million in West and Central Africa.
The damage is already visible. The June to September rains failed across Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda’s Karamoja. South Sudan and Karamoja are on track for their driest year on record. Now the Horn of Africa faces the opposite danger: heavy rains and floods along Somalia’s rivers, where famine is a real risk.
In Southern Africa, forecasters expect late, poor rains and long dry spells over the season that is starting now. Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Madagascar and Lesotho are of greatest concern. The worst hunger will come not now but in the lean months of 2027 and early 2028, when the food from a failed harvest runs out.
For a farmer who depends on rain, one failed season can mean selling the last goat, pulling a child out of school or eating seed meant for next year. A family can take years to recover.
Wars far away, hunger at home
The war between Russia and Ukraine has entered a new phase on the Black Sea. Both sides are now striking each other’s grain ports. Russian wheat exports fell by more than half in August. The FAO Food Price Index reached its highest level since November 2022. African and Middle Eastern countries, among the biggest buyers of Black Sea wheat, are low on stocks and will have to buy at higher prices.
The war in the Gulf has hit even closer to the farm. Since 28 February, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has been largely blocked. About a third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser normally passes through it. Urea more than doubled in price, from about US$400 to over US$850 a tonne in April.
World prices have since eased, but African farmers have not felt the relief. In July, urea still cost about US$975 a tonne in Malawi and US$933 in Tanzania, more than double the world price. Weak currencies, freight costs and port delays keep it high.
Fuel tells the same story. Ethiopia lost more than 180,000 tonnes of fuel deliveries, halving its daily diesel supply. In Kenya, record fuel price rises pushed transport fares up by about a quarter. Zimbabwe’s fuel import costs rose 40% in under a month.
Every one of these numbers reaches the farm. Diesel moves the harvest to market. Fertiliser that a farmer cannot afford means a smaller harvest next season. And the bread, rice and cooking oil that city families buy cost more each week.
Same storm, different shelter
The same shocks are hitting the whole world. What differs is who has shelter.
When fertiliser prices jumped, India raised its fertiliser subsidy by 11%, to 415 billion rupees for the summer season alone. The European Union proposed €540 million in emergency relief for its farmers, which member states can top up to about €1.5 billion. France added its own fertiliser aid. These governments had the money, the institutions and the political room to act within weeks.
Most African governments did not. Many entered this year already squeezed by debt. In nearly four in five sub-Saharan African countries, governments now pay more in interest than they spend on health or education, according to the World Bank. A treasury that sends its money to creditors cannot shield its farmers. Countries such as Ghana, Malawi and Sudan could not even pay cash for fertiliser imports.
So the shock that a rich country absorbs as a budget line falls on an African family as hunger. That is not a difference in weather. It is a difference in power.
A vulnerability that was built
Africa is not weak by nature. Its vulnerability was built over generations, and it is still being built today.
- Colonialism reshaped African farming for export. The best land, roads, railways and research went to cotton, coffee, cocoa and groundnuts for European factories. Food for Africans came second. Many of those patterns remain.
- Structural adjustment dismantled our defences. From the 1980s, loan conditions pushed governments to close grain reserves and marketing boards, cut extension services and open markets to subsidised imports. We lost the buffers that once carried us through bad years.
- We were taught to import our food. Sub-Saharan Africa’s food import bill was projected to reach about US$65 billion in 2025. Every rise in world prices and every weak currency now lands directly on our tables.
- We were taught to import our soil fertility. A farming model built on purchased fertiliser and hybrid seed ties the fertility of African soils to gas fields and shipping lanes thousands of kilometres away. The Strait of Hormuz has shown what that means.
- Debt keeps the cycle going. Money that should build irrigation, storage and rural roads goes to pay interest. Climate finance, when it comes, too often arrives as loans, adding new debt to repair damage Africa did not cause.
- The rules are written elsewhere. Trade rules, seed laws, intellectual property regimes and credit ratings are largely set by and for the powerful. They narrow the policy space African governments need to protect their own farmers.
These are not separate problems. They are one system, and it was designed to keep Africa supplying raw materials and buying finished goods. El Niño and the wars did not create this system. They have simply shown us, once again, how it works.
What must change
This year’s World Food Day theme is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” The innovation Africa needs most is not another imported package. It is the courage to rebuild food systems that Africans control.
- Act now on El Niño. Governments and agencies must move before the lean season, not after it. Pre-position food, protect livestock and seed, and get cash to families early.
- Rebuild public food reserves. National and regional grain reserves, run in the public interest, are a basic defence that structural adjustment took away.
- Invest in agroecology and healthy soils. Compost, manure, legumes, trees and diverse crops build fertility that no blockade can cut off. Public money now spent on imported fertiliser should shift steadily towards them.
- Protect farmers’ seed. Farmer-managed seed systems hold the drought-tolerant varieties we need. Laws that criminalise saving and exchanging seed must change.
- Feed Africa from African farms. Support territorial markets, local processing and public procurement, including school meals, that buy from our own producers.
- Cancel unjust debt and pay climate finance as grants. No country should have to choose between paying creditors and feeding its people. Adaptation finance must reach farmer organisations directly.
- Give Africa its policy space. Trade and investment rules must allow African governments to protect their farmers and their food.
Africa can feed itself
Africa has the land, the water, the seed, the knowledge and the farmers to feed itself. Our small-scale producers already grow most of the food Africans eat, often with little or no public support.
What we lack is not ability. It is control over our own food systems, and freedom from the debts, rules and dependencies that keep us exposed to every storm.
On this World Food Day, I call on African governments, the African Union and our international partners to stop treating each crisis as a surprise. The next El Niño, the next war and the next price shock will come. Let them find Africa ready, fed by its own farmers and standing on its own soil.
Million Belay (PhD)
General Coordinator, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)
16 October 2026
