Rising tensions in the Middle East are causing significant global economic repercussions, disrupting essential trade routes and supply chains, and driving up the costs of fuel, fertilizer and food.
In Africa, aid agencies are raising alarms about rising costs that threaten food security in vulnerable nations heavily reliant on imports for food and fuel.
The fallout from the conflict in Iran couldn’t come at a worse time for countries like Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, “where millions of people are already living through drought, hunger, displacement, and conflict,” Melaku Yirga, Mercy Corps’ vice president for Africa, told CNN.
The conflict-ridden Somalia and Sudan, both of which have faced famine in recent years, are at the highest risk of slipping into acute levels of hunger as the Middle Eastern crisis continues, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP).
The WFP estimates that an additional 45 million people worldwide may be at risk of acute hunger, particularly as this conflict coincides with critical funding shortages for aid services.
Yirga warns that we may be on the brink of “the first major crisis of the post-aid era, where the need is immense, but the response simply does not come.”
He cautions that, if these tensions persist for several months, “the consequences could unleash a far deeper crisis – disrupting critical planting seasons, driving food prices even higher, crippling aid delivery, and pushing even more people over the edge at a time when humanitarian support is already stretched to breaking point.”