More than 40 million people across six East African nations are facing acute food insecurity, according to a new regional assessment released Thursday that paints a grim picture of hunger deepening across the region even as some countries record modest gains.
The report, compiled under the Intergovernmental Authority on Development framework, found that 40.3 million people in Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda are now classified as acutely food insecure, representing roughly 34 percent of the population analysed across the six states.
Sudan carries the heaviest burden, with an estimated 19.5 million people, or 41 percent of its assessed population, going hungry amid the country’s prolonged conflict. South Sudan is not far behind, with a hunger prevalence rate of 55 percent and 7.8 million people requiring urgent assistance. Somalia recorded 6.5 million people in need, about a third of its population.
Kenya’s numbers are also troubling. The report puts the number of food-insecure Kenyans at 4.1 million, a rise of 46 percent compared to last year, reflecting the toll of erratic rainfall and rising living costs on households in arid and semi-arid counties. Djibouti, the smallest of the six states, has around 300,000 people affected, a quarter of its population.
Uganda offered a rare bright spot, with the number of food-insecure people falling to 2.1 million from 3.4 million in 2025, an improvement attributed to better harvests in parts of the country.
Regional officials say the crisis is being driven by a combination of factors, including ongoing conflict, drought, economic shocks and a decline in humanitarian funding from international donors, who have been forced to stretch shrinking budgets across multiple global emergencies.
A senior regional official said the priority now is to move away from crisis response and toward prevention, calling for stronger early-warning systems, more resilient food production, deeper regional trade integration to move surplus food to deficit areas, and better coordination of data across member states to anticipate shocks before they become emergencies.
“We must shift from reacting to emergencies towards anticipating and preventing them,” the official said, urging governments to treat food security as a long-term investment rather than an emergency expense.
Aid agencies working in the region have repeatedly warned that funding shortfalls are forcing difficult trade-offs, with some feeding programmes scaled back even as needs grow. Analysts say the figures underscore the urgency of coordinated regional action, particularly as climate shocks become more frequent and unpredictable across the Horn of Africa and East Africa.