Soaring demand at food banks across Africa thanks to massive aid cuts

Independent

a day ago

Food banks across Africa have told The Independent that cuts to foreign aid – primarily by Donald Trump in the US, but including the UK – are helping to significantly drive up the number of people needing their help, while reducing the supplies they can hand out.
Food Forward South Africa said that demand for its food services has soared since the start of the year and is expected to increase yet further as grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) run out in the coming months, while Food Banking Kenya has revealed that demand is up 300 per cent this year. In Nigeria, the Lagos Food Bank is another that is expecting shortages thanks to US aid cuts.
'The numbers we are seeing this year are absolutely huge. We thought numbers were big in other years, but this is completely unimaginable,' says John Gathungu, CEO of Food Banking Kenya. 'We are doing all we can to restrain people and discourage them from collecting food from us.'
Food Banking Kenya also partners with the Kenyan Red Cross, another organisation impacted by aid cuts, which runs health and ambulance services around the country. The food bank is working to help patients with food deliveries that the Red Cross is unable to completely support – but is nonetheless struggling to meet demand, which has led to tragic consequences.
'There was one story where the Red Cross called our offices to say that there is a family in a certain area - a woman with three children - who were in a desperate situation after being unable to eat for three days,' says Gathungu. 'By the time our delivery driver arrived it was already too late - the woman had actually committed sucide... which was incredibly distressing for us.'
Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria all took massive hits when USAID terminated more than 80 per cent of its contracts in May, worth an estimated $260 million, $224m, and $178m respectively.
But it is not just decisions from Washington that are hitting government budgets in Sub-Saharan Africa: next year is set to mark the third consecutive year of decline in G7 aid spending, according to Oxfam, with the US (down $33 billion), the UK (down $5bn), Germany (down $3.5bn) and France (down $3bn) all significantly cutting overseas aid year-on-year.
Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria have also all seen their public services and social security provision deteriorate as a result, with HIV services in South Africa and food aid in Nigeria particularly devastated.
'Suprised how many organisations relied on aid'
Kenya is major agricultural economy that exports food all around the globe - but also faces major food insecurity challenges, with 46 per cent of people living on less than $3 a day, according to the Word Bank.
Food insecurity struggles have been significantly heightened this year by aid cuts, according Gathungu, whose food bank last year provided more than 20 million meals across the country's five major cities, with food largely sourced from farm surpluses. Demand for the food bank's services has increased by more 300 per cent this year. says Gathungu, far outstripping what they are able to provide.
Food Banking Kenya's office is now also receiving a constant flow of emails and phone calls from organisations looking to partner with them and when delivery trucks go to deliver food parcels to families, they now deliver with a specific list of recipients due to the situation being unmanageable otherwise, says Gathungu.
It is not only from direct recipients of food aid where the food bank is seeing an impact: A number of charitable partners have been severely impacted by the cuts, and the food bank is doing what it can to fill the gap. 'I have been surprised just how many partners and projects relied on USAID for funding,' says Gathungu.
For example, the Food Bank was due to partner with a company called Nature Lock to deliver school meals to 200 schools in informal settlements. Despite the fact that all the paperwork had already been signed, the stop-work order from USAID led to the entire deal being put on pause - until Food Banking Kenya moved to fill the gap with its own food and logistics operation. 'We could not just say to the 20,000 children who were going to receive food, that that simply was not going to happen any more,' says Gathungu.
'Worse to come'
Elsewhere on the continent, Food Forward South Africa distributes 25m tonnes of food last year, making it the largest food banking organisation in Africa by some margin. The charity - which is sourced from farms, manufacturers, and supermarket - is based in Cape Town, but reaches hundreds of thousands of people in small, rural communities through programmes that include direct food assistance, nutrition services for mothers and babies, school breakfasts, and community kitchens for vulnerable groups.
According to Food Forward's managing director, Andy DuPlessis, the charity has already seen an increase in demand this year –to the point where they have had to put a pause on all applications for new distribution partners. 'We normally get around 100 and 250 applications a month, but are currently getting 350 to 400 applications,' he says.
In the coming months, DuPlessis believes that demand is set to increase by a further 10 to 20 per cent as USAID grants and redundancy payments begin to 'fizzle out', and more people begin to require their services. 'The cuts are phased out by September, and unemployment insurance is also running out, so we anticipate over the next year we will see a big increase in demand,' he says.
Core drivers of demand, DuPlessis continues, include middle class individuals who have lost USAID-funded jobs and require financial support, as well as people suffering from chronic illnesses like HIV who are no longer able to work, or services that provide support for chronic illnesses that can no longer provide food off their own back.
Even before the impact of aid cuts, some 55 per cent of South Africa's population lived below the poverty line, and around a quarter of households were severely food insecure - despite the fact that South Africa is a major food exporter, and produces more than enough food for its people to eat.
The country's difficulties are set to increase yet further as a result of new tariffs from the Trump administration worth 30 per cent - a tax that puts up to 100,000 jobs at risk, according to authorities.
In Nigeria, the Lagos Food Bank has been operating for 10 years now to bring food to communities in a country where millions are suffering from long-term food insecurity. Last year a team of 30,000 volunteers was able to feed some three million people by directing excess food from supermarkets and farms - but according to Michael Sunbola, executive director at the food bank, this was just a 'drop in the ocean'.
Having suffered a significant funding hit due to Trump slashing USAID programmes, the organisation says that the aid cuts will only worsen a pattern that it is already seeing thanks to the country's chronic food insecurity and food inflation.
'The last year has seen the cost of living soar and people's disposable income plummet, pushing the middle classes into poverty and fueling demand for the food bank,' says Sunbola.
'We thought there was high demand during Covid – but what we are seeing right now is five times that,' says Sunbola.
Food inflation in Nigeria currently stands at more than 30 per cent, as a result of weak harvests and low food stocks in the country. 'The last year has seen the cost of living soar and people's disposable income plummet, pushing the middle classes into poverty and fueling demand for the food bank,' says Sunbola.
Aid cuts have, however, will impact food bank's ability to keep its services open, with international donor organisation also losing their own funding through USAID or other aid cuts.
Earlier this year, two international partners pulled out from supporting the food bank, says Sunbola - but so far the food bank has largely been able to fill the gap by working with new corporate partners.
Climate's compounding effect
Climate change is also a key driver of Nigeria's food insecurity crisis, driving less regular rainfall patterns and prolonged dry seasons, says Sunbola. 'Agricultural yields, particularly in the Northern regions of Nigeria, are being seriously impacted,' Sunbola adds.
'Weak yields then have a major impact on food prices here in Lagos.'
Meanwhile, South Africa is 'being hit by more and more extreme weather events like droughts and flooding - and when these happen we are often first responders on the scene with food supplies,' says DuPlessis.
In fact, all three programmes also report how climate change is only increasing pressures on food systems.
In Kenya, meanwhile, climate impacts have at times been so severe over the last few years that at times farmers themselves have had to be supplied with food support.
'Rains have become weaker, and much less predictable. Farmers' crops are failing and hunger is striking rural communities,' says Gathungu.
'in 2023 there were issues of having no rain, while in 2024 there were was too much rain and farms became flooded. Both years we have had to supply food to smallholder farmers who in previous years supplied food to us.'
This article is part of The Independent's Rethinking Global Aid project
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