A million people face starvation in Somalia as funding dries up

Mohammed Omar Ahmed and David Herbling, Bloomberg News on Feb 16, 2026

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One million people in Somalia are under threat of severe hunger amid a lack of funding to tackle disasters, according to a leading domestic charity.

Scarce rain and warmer temperatures since September have caused drought conditions across the Horn of Africa, with the hottest regions of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average, according to the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.

Somalia’s government declared a state of emergency in November, saying 4.4 million people were affected, while neighboring Kenya estimates 3.6 million of its people will require food aid by June.

The latest crisis comes just as the region bounced back from its worst drought in seven decades. Since then, rich nations including the U.S. have slashed humanitarian assistance, forcing United Nations agencies and other aid organizations to scale back food aid rations and emergency funding across Africa.

The United Nation’s agency for children Unicef has appealed for $121 million for Somalia, saying nearly two million children under five face acute malnutrition. The U.K. announced £6 million in new humanitarian funding for Somalia last week.

“Humanitarian funding is at its lowest level in a decade,” the Hormuud Salaam Foundation, a non-profit funded by Hormuud Telecom and Salaam Somali Bank, said in a statement on Monday, warning that nearly one million people were on the verge of famine.

Four consecutive failed rain seasons have exhausted food reserves for nine out of 10 Somali homes, according to a survey released by the charity Save the Children in January.

In Kenya, authorities intend to import as much a million bags of corn as declining stocks push up prices of the nation’s staple, according to Agriculture Minister Mutahi Kagwe. The government plans to spend $32 million on feeding programs.

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