Tomorrow (24 February), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is expected to convene its 1332^nd meeting with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on the nexus between Food, Peace, and Security.

The session will commence with an opening statement from Obeida A. El Dandarawy, Permanent Representative of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the AU and Chairperson of the PSC for February, followed by introductory remarks by Bankole Adeoye, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security. It is expected that  Moses Vilakati, AU Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Development will make a statement. The representatives of FAO, WFP and IFAD will also be expected to make their respective presentations.

The PSC had last scheduled a similar agenda item on its programme for May 2025. However, the session did not happen as planned. In 2017, during its 660^th and 708^th sessions, the PSC framed drought and food shortages as drivers of instability. It warned that climate-driven droughts are ‘major triggers of tensions and violence in communities.’ However, the PSC did not hold a session dedicated directly to food insecurity and conflict nexus until 2022. This changed at its 1083^rd session, when the Council held a session fully dedicated to ‘Food Security and Conflict in Africa,’ as part of the 2022 AU theme on nutrition and food security. Later in 2022, the PSC again took up food security in the context of climate change. As highlighted in the communiqué of the 1083ʳᵈ session of the PSC, one of the ways that armed conflicts contribute to food insecurity is by severely disrupting agriculture and food systems. Later on in July 2025, this issue received attention during the PSC’s 1286^th meeting on the ‘Humanitarian Situation in Africa,’ where it underscored ‘the importance of adopting a holistic strategy in food systems that addresses both production and consumption, focusing on sustainability, resilience, and equity.’ In this regard, it called for the ‘implementation of an African renaissance in agri-food systems approach and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) Kampala Declaration.’ This is where, during tomorrow’s session, the engagement with FAO and IFAD can highlight how their interventions can build on and leverage CAADP and the CACDP Kampala Declaration to advance early planning and intervention.

In July 2025, Addis Ababa co-hosted the 2^nd United Nations Food Systems Summit Stocktake (UNFSS+4) building on the momentum of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and the first Stocktake in 2023 (UNFSS+2) to reflect on global progress in food systems transformation, strengthen collaboration, and unlock finance and investments to accelerate action towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Summit saw the launch of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (SOFI) report, which revealed a modest decline in global hunger – but a troubling rise in food insecurity in Africa. The report highlighted how persistent food price inflation has undermined access to healthy diets, especially for low-income populations, calling for coherent fiscal and monetary policies to stabilise markets, emphasising the need for governments and central banks to act in alignment. It also called for open and resilient trade systems to ensure the steady flow of goods across borders. Additionally, it urged the implementation of targeted social protection measures to support at-risk populations most vulnerable to economic shocks, and also stressed the importance of sustained investment in resilient agrifood systems to strengthen food security and long-term stability. In this context, care should be taken to ensure that short-term interventions do not compromise African biodiversity in sources of food, thereby undermining long-term food security.

Food insecurity remains prevalent in various parts of the continent, with conflict settings hit particularly hard. According to the globally recognised Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—a standard tool for assessing food insecurity severity—more than two-thirds of African countries are currently classified as IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) or higher. Since the PSC’s last session dedicated to this agenda, various cases on the continent have come to show that food insecurity is accelerating, exacerbated mostly by conflict and insecurity. The nexus between food insecurity and armed conflict reinforces each other in a vicious cycle. On the one hand, conflict is a primary driver of hunger, as violence displaces farmers, destroys crops and infrastructure, and disrupts supply chains. Conflict and insecurity also exacerbate food insecurity by impeding response and humanitarian access, including the use of humanitarian access as a weapon of war.

One conflict situation that aptly illustrates the deadly interface between food insecurity and conflicts in which humanitarian access is used as a weapon of war is in Sudan. The intensification of the war and notably the weaponisation of humanitarian access, particularly by the RSF, has culminated in ‘the world’s worst famine.’ Beyond Zamzam camp and neighbouring areas in North Darfur, the UN’s IPC latest report established that levels of acute malnutrition have surpassed famine thresholds in two other areas in North Darfur, Um Baru and Kernoi. This means that Sudan possesses a new humanitarian record of having ‘the most areas of active famine on the planet.’ Altogether, according to WFP, an estimated 834,000 people in the region are experiencing famine, representing over 40 per cent of the global famine caseload.

Food crises categorised as IPC Phase 3 and above are no longer limited to conflict-affected states. Through WFP, it has been reported that the latest analysis from the Cadre Harmonisé – the equivalent of the IPC for West and Central Africa – also projects that over three million people will face emergency levels of food insecurity (Phase 4) this year – more than double the 1.5 million in 2020. Four countries – Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger- account for 77 per cent of the food insecurity figures, including 15,000 people in Nigeria’s Borno State at risk of catastrophic hunger (IPC-5) for the first time in nearly a decade. While these conditions are accelerated by insecurity, they also contribute to the aggravation of insecurity.

The ‘WFP 2025 Global Outlook’ highlighted that the Eastern Africa region faces compounded crises driven by conflicts, widespread displacement and climate shocks, leaving nearly 62 million people acutely food insecure. The region grapples with more than 26 million displaced people, with Sudan representing the largest crisis globally at 11.3 million. In Sudan, in addition to the Zamzam, 13 additional areas with a high presence of IDPs and refugees are at risk of famine.

FAO’s ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025’ paints similar pictures as the other reports. Among the African countries with the largest numbers of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity were Nigeria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia, while the countries with the largest share of the analysed population facing high levels of acute food insecurity were Sudan and South Sudan, among others globally. More than half of the people living in South Sudan and the Sudan faced high levels of acute food insecurity. While it is not the only factor that accounts for these conditions of food insecurity in these countries, in all of them, conflict and insecurity constitute a significant contributor and factor.

Increasingly, relatively stable countries are slipping into crisis due to economic shocks and climate change. The rising cost of living and widespread economic hardship have made food insecurity a catalyst for social unrest and political instability in various parts of the continent, including the mass protests witnessed in countries such as Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Kenya and Nigeria during 2022, 2023 and 2024, as well as Madagascar in 2025. These cases highlight that it is particularly in contexts in which there are widespread perceptions of ineffective, unresponsive, corrupt and weak systems of governance that food-related grievances spark broader political discontent and mass protests. Debt distress facing some countries and the increasing diversion of resources from key sectors like agriculture and social security also play a part in these cases. Additionally, scarcity, accelerated by climate change, raises tensions over land, water and food resources, making disputes more likely to turn violent. Competition between herders and farmers over dwindling pasturelands and fields has triggered thousands of casualties in West and Central Africa.

As part of its exploration of how to enhance ways of addressing food insecurity in conflict settings, the PSC may also consider the role of the African Peace and Security Architecture and other AU entities that play a role in humanitarian affairs. In this context, tomorrow’s session may assess progress made in the development and implementation of anticipatory tools for crisis preparedness and early action, as well as the use of humanitarian diplomacy as part of the toolbox for responding to the humanitarian dimension of conflicts in Africa, including conflict-induced food insecurity. The session may also revisit the AU’s ongoing challenge in financing humanitarian assistance and emphasise the need for Member States to fulfil their commitments, particularly the decision to increase contributions to the Refugees and IDPs Fund from 2% to 4% as outlined in EX.CL/Dec.567(XVII). Additionally, tomorrow’s session may also consider the contribution that the Africa Risk Capacity (ARC) could make. For instance, the introduction of a new parametric insurance product in 2023 to help African countries deal with flood-related impacts. Furthermore, the PSC may highlight the importance of the Special Emergency Assistance Fund (SEAF) in supporting populations affected by drought, famine, and food insecurity, while urging continued international support as a lifeline for vulnerable groups across the continent.

The expected outcome of the session could be a communiqué. The PSC may express grave concern over the worsening food security situation across Africa, particularly in conflict-affected regions such as Sudan, the DRC, and the Sahel. Council may reaffirm its condemnation of the use of starvation as a weapon of war and the deliberate targeting of food systems and humanitarian access, in breach of international humanitarian law. To build resilience, the Council may urge Member States to increase public investment in agriculture and rural development in accordance with the Malabo Declaration target of allocating 10% of national budgets to the sector. Recognising the dual role of food insecurity both as a consequence and a driver of conflict, the Council may emphasise the need to strengthen early warning mechanisms that integrate food security indicators with conflict risk assessments. It may also encourage the establishment of joint task forces that bridge peace, humanitarian, and development actors to enhance coordinated responses. Furthermore, the PSC could call for fast-tracked operationalisation and financing of the African Humanitarian Agency (AfHA) and emphasise the role of Africa Risk Capacity (ARC) and the Special Emergency Assistance Fund (SEAF) in supporting anticipatory action and crisis response. The PSC may also call for the inclusion of the explicit requirement in the mandate of mediators, special political missions and those entrusted with peacemaking to dedicate time and effort to address the crisis of food security for conflicts on which they work. Finally, in light of the burden of unsustainable debt on public budgets, inducing and exacerbating food insecurity, the Council may advocate for coordinated debt relief, reform of the international financial system, and safeguarding domestic resource mobilisation from being redirected to servicing debt at the expense of ensuring adequate investment in food systems and peacebuilding efforts.