After the rains in Somalia failed repeatedly between 2020 and 2023, the country was left facing a devastating drought. Then, in a pattern that is becoming all too common in the region as the world’s climate warms, returning rains the following year displaced three million people through flooding.

A huge increase in humanitarian assistance during the drought, with around $2bn raised in 2022 alone, helped the country avoid a catastrophic famine.

Now – before the country has been able to fully recover from the previous crisis – Somalia is once again facing drought and food insecurity. Two failed crop seasons last year resulted in harvests 45 per cent below-average yields, according to the World Food Programme, while a lack of rain this year has prompted serious alarm for the July-August harvest.

The big difference this time around, however, is that aid cuts mean that there is no guarantee the country’s humanitarian system will be able to plug the gap.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/e52OQ/1/ “In 2022 and 2023, the country was really on the brink of famine, and significant international resources were able to pull the country back from that,” says Juliet Moriku Balikowa, Oxfam country director for Somalia.

“What we are seeing now is that same pattern emerging again that we saw in 2022 and 2023, with rainfall far below the required level in parts of the country,” she adds. “But now funding cuts are already really limiting the ability of NGOs to respond.”

In the three months up to the end of June 2025, 4.6m Somalians are expected to face acute levels of food shortages.

The US, whose aid budget President Trump has decimated, provided around half of Somalia’s aid in recent years. With much of that money now out of the picture, some 60 per cent of NGOs operating in the country have already had to make cuts, according to the Somalia NGO Consortium. “Staff are being laid off, project offices are being closed across the country, and programmes are just being stopped in their tracks”, says Balikowa.

Minister of humanitarian and disaster management in Somalia’s southwest state, Abdinasir Abdi Arush, tells The Independent he is seeing similar patterns.

“The situation is really very worrisome, especially since the crop harvest for last year was already not ideal,” he says. “In the past weather patterns were reliable, but now it is a completely different world. Very low financial resources are reaching us through humanitarian agencies, we are really very worried about what is going to happen.

Foreign aid represents around one-fifth of Somali income

Statistics from UN agencies operating in the country further illuminate the worrying picture.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that includes the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization, warned at the end of March that 4.6m people in Somalia will likely experience high levels of food insecurity between April and June 2025. That includes about 784,000 people in IPC Phase 4, which is the stage prior to famine.

Read the full article: Trump’s aid cuts leave countries unable to fight back against famine

Source: Independent.co.uk