Torrential floods deepen food crisis in West, Central Africa amid climate emergency

An estimated 4 million people, many of them small subsistence farmers, in over a dozen countries in West and Central Africa that have seen their crops decimated by unusually heavy flooding.
In northern Cameroon, for example, the latest floods have destroyed the harvest for this season, while nearly 1 million hectares of farmland across the region remain under water, with soil nutrients being washed away and setting the scene for an even worse crop production next season. In Dana village on the floodplain of the Logone River bordering Cameroon and Chad, hundreds of hectares of crops and dotted huts in hamlets remain under water. In Nigeria, floods have reportedly destroyed more than 570,000 hectares of farmland, including in the northeastern and middle belt states, where most of Nigeria’s food is grown, crops such as rice, maize and small grains are lost.
According to Sib Ollo of the World Food Programme (WFP), before the massive floods, the West and Central Africa region was already facing a bleak food security situation. But prolonged drought in 2021, conflict in the Sahel region that has displaced nearly 8 million people, most of them farmers, the pandemic that had disrupted farming, and fallout from the Ukraine crisis which curbed fertilizer supplies to the region, meant crop output was going to be low. “It is an unprecedented situation,” Ollo said. “This is a perfect storm of factors all playing and leading us towards a catastrophe, a major crisis.“ The number of people affected by food insecurity and in need of aid in the region was over 40 million before the floods, said Kouacou Dominique Koffy, head of the West Africa emergency and resilience team for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Koffy said 80% of those recently displaced were agro-pastoral farmers and it would take time for them to return, and the water to recede, before they could resume farming.