The United States choice to stop foreign aid is making a serious hunger crisis in Sudan even worse. Millions of people are at risk of dying from illnesses related to not getting enough food.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a war between its regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The war has killed tens of thousands people, forced millions from their homes and left many facing famine. In addition to killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting over 12 million, the war has pushed five areas of the country into famine and nearly 25 million people into acute food insecurity.
In much of Sudan, community run soup kitchens are the only thing preventing mass starvation and many of them rely on US funding. The pause in USAID funding now risks compounding the hunger crisis. The freezing of US humanitarian assistance has forced the closure of almost 80% of the emergency food kitchens set up to help people left destitute by Sudan’s civil war. Aid volunteers said the impact of president Donald Trump's executive order halting contributions from the US government’s development organisation (USAID) for 90 days meant more than 1100 communal kitchens had shut.
The kitchens are run by groups known as emergency response rooms(ERRs), a grassroots network of activists who stayed on the frontlines to respond to the crises in their neighbourhoods. Last year, USAID contributed 44 percent to Sudan's $1.8bn humanitarian response, according to the United Nations. A portion of this sum went to supporting Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs). The Trump administration abruptly suspended all US aid last month to determine whether it was serving US interests, and moved to begin dismantle USAID. The State Department has issued an exemption for emergency food assistance, but Sudanese groups and others say there is significant confusion and uncertainty about what that means in practice.
The normal channels for processing a waiver through USAID no longer exist, and it is not clear if cash assistance on which the communal kitchens depend will be restored. The closure of the majority of Sudan’s emergency kitchens is being seen as a significant setback by organisations working to tackle the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine conditions reported in at least five locations. In warehouses across Africa, food shipped from the United States intended for the starving people of war torn Sudan is sitting rotting, its fate unknown. In Cameroon, Djibouti and elsewhere, rice,wheat, lentils,flour and beans that were on their way to Sudan are being air conditioned to keep from spoiling and sprayed to guard against bugs.
Since the Trump administration announced an immediate suspension of all foreign assistance, blocking ongoing aid programmes and freezing new funding. For the international organisations providing life saving humanitarian assistance with US funding, including UN agencies and Catholic Relief Services(CRS), which has already begun laying off staff, the situation is complicated by the so-called ‘waivers’ the US government allowed for commodities the organisations had already paid for.
This is why, according to aid agency and Congress sources, food supplies are sitting dormant in African warehouses: the commodities have been paid for, but the organisations do not have the money to distribute them because that cash was supposed to come from the US government. The ongoing conflict in Sudan has severely disrupted agricultural production, leading to a critical food security crisis. The violence has forced farmers to abandon their lands, resulting in a significant decline in the production of staple crops like sorghum and millet—42% and 64% reductions, respectively. This turmoil has left over 24.6 million people facing acute hunger, with famine conditions reported in multiple regions.
The crisis in Sudan is a call for neighboring countries, including Nigeria, to bolster their agricultural resilience. Investments in sustainable farming practices, infrastructure development, and political stability are crucial to safeguarding food security. By learning from Sudan’s challenges, Nigeria can strengthen its agricultural sector to better withstand regional disruptions and contribute to overall stability in the region.
What happens now?
Humanitarian work is incredibly complex and requires a network of organisations working alongside local heroes to tackle difficult challenges. No single group can do it all; but, when a powerhouse like USAID is suddenly removed from the situation, everyone suffers.
Sudan’s situation has been sore for months, but it can still get much, much worse. We expect to witness a surge in deaths from starvation, preventable diseases, and the further collapse of healthcare services in the coming weeks if USAID’s critical work in Sudan does not fully resume. The suffering of the Sudanese people is already unbearable. Abandoning them now would be unconscionable. We urge you to stand with them in this dark hour.