Item 1 of 5 Beneficiaries from different Internally Displaced Persons camps wait to receive support following the exit of USAID, at a World Food Programme distribution centre in Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria, August 27, 2025. REUTERS\/Sodiq Adelakun.<\/p>\n
[1\/5]Beneficiaries from different Internally Displaced Persons camps wait to receive support following the exit of USAID, at a World Food Programme distribution centre in Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria, August 27, 2025. REUTERS\/Sodiq Adelakun. Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab<\/a>LAGOS, Nigeria, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Thousands of people in Nigeria’s strife-torn northeast are facing the risk of catastrophic food shortages for the first time in nearly a decade, as aid cuts<\/a> deepen malnutrition across the region, the U.N. World Food Programme warned on Friday.<\/p>\n Around 15,000 people are at risk in Borno state, the agency said, an area already struggling with years of militant unrest.<\/p>\n Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n Across West and Central Africa, 55 million people are facing severe food shortages, with more than three quarters of the people affected in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, it added.<\/p>\n The U.N. body did not pick out specific funding but agencies have been raising the alarm since the Trump administration started reducing aid<\/a> as part of its \u201cAmerica First\u201d policy<\/a> last year, and Britain and others cut aid budgets to boost spending on defence<\/a>.<\/p>\n More than 13 million children in the region were projected to suffer malnutrition this year, the WFP said.<\/p>\n Conflict, displacement and economic pressures have driven food insecurity for years, but cuts to humanitarian assistance were now pushing vulnerable communities beyond their ability to cope, the statement added.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reduced funding we saw in 2025 has deepened hunger and malnutrition across the region,\u201d Sarah Longford, WFP\u2019s deputy regional director for West and Central Africa, said.<\/p>\n Funding shortfalls in 2025 had already forced WFP to scale back nutrition programmes in Nigeria, affecting more than 300,000 children, after the agency warned that<\/a> nearly 35 million people could go hungry as its resources ran out in December.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, insecurity in Mali has disrupted food supply routes, leaving 1.5 million people facing crisis levels of hunger, while more than half a million people in Cameroon risk being cut off from aid in the coming weeks, the statement said.<\/p>\n The U.N. agency said it needed more than $453 million over the next six months to continue providing humanitarian assistance across the region.<\/p>\n Writing by Ben Ezeamalu; Editing by Andrew Heavens<\/p>\n Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n