This paper explores how climate change, violent conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis combine to drive rapidly increasing levels of food insecurity.  

These drivers play out differently across and within regions and countries, and this paper focuses on how a combination of the drivers plays out on the African continent.  

It looks at four subregions (cf. part IV of the paper)—North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and Central and Southern Africa—and several countries within these regions (Ethiopia, South Sudan, Mali, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo). 

Addressing the impacts of these compounding crises and breaking the vicious cycle of 
climate change, food insecurity and conflict requires a concerted effort by local, national, regional and global humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors, governments, and donors.  

To this end, the paper concludes with the nine following recommendations on the way forward: 

• Review national and regional policies to ensure that they address the linkages between the problems so that the solutions are as interconnected as the challenges. 

• Move on from a review to develop coordinated, coherent and decisive action throughout the region so that improving food security, enhancing resilience to the effects of climate change and building peace are combined. 

• Continue to guarantee the humanitarian operational space and focus policy on moving from emergency relief to sustained food insecurity in development and peacebuilding, combining short-term results with laying the foundations for long-term progress. 

• Scale-up the resources available to support food security and coherent inter-sectoral action. 

• Focus on programmes that offer a multiple bottom-line product—improved food systems, enhanced prospects for peace and greater resilience to the impacts of climate change.  

• Base all humanitarian, peace and development activities, including those that address climate change impacts, on a thorough assessment of the local context—listening carefully to what local voices have to say about problems and possibilities on the ground. 

• Ensure that all activities are properly monitored not only to ensure accountability and appropriate use of funding but also to permit flexibility, and make the necessary adjustments as problems arise or circumstances change (including the global geopolitical and economic situation). 

•  Act firmly against any actor that uses starvation as a weapon of war or conflict. 

• Use every opportunity, including at UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties, to reinforce the commitment to achieving Zero Hunger by investing in nutrition and resilience in countries affected by conflict and climate change.