Warning over severe hunger crisis in DR Congo’s megacity

Climate change and conflict are driving severe food insecurity across the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, while cuts to foreign aid are impacting the ability of UN agencies to respond
Severe hunger is gripping the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and urgent action is needed to deal with rising food prices, a food bank in Kinshasa, the country’s capital has told The Independent .

Régis Ngudie, of Mapendo Banque Alimentaire in Kinshasa, said that the climate crisis , prolonged conflict in the east of the country , and a weak economy are driving the crisis, with the food bank able to meet only a fraction of the capital’s needs.

“Across Kinshasa and the whole country, our brothers are suffering from this terrible problem of hunger, and we desperately need to find solutions,” Mr Ngudie said.

“The hunger is not about a lack of food – there is plenty of food around – but instead it is due to the serious economic challenges that so many face here, and the lack of social security available for the Congolese people,” he added.

Kinshasa is one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities, defined by having a population in excess of 10 million people.

Public services across the city are already under severe pressure due to the population of the city soaring from 3.5 million in 1990 to around 18 million today, while cuts to foreign aid since last year have further reduced support available for residents, Mr Ngudie said.

Climate shocks are driving food insecurity by increasing the price of food when harvests are weak, while disasters like the Kinshasa floods of 2025 also impact food supply chain systems and disrupt people’s livelihoods, he added.

Conflict in the east of the country is also threatening food supply chains to the capital, he continued, and has resulted in more internally displaced people (IDPs) making their way to the city.

The US and Israeli-led conflict against Iran in the Middle East has deepened challenges in recent weeks by driving up the cost of food and fertiliser, Mr Ngudie said.

“The huge increase in fuel prices due to the war has made it much harder to bring fruits and vegetables in from rural areas, with the products that do make it now selling at a much higher price,” he added.

Mapendo Banque Alimentaire, which was established during the food scarce times of the Covid-19 pandemic, is able to support several thousand people in the city with food donated by supermarkets, farms and private individuals.

It is focused on providing food the most vulnerable in society, including families that have fled the war in the East, and it also runs campaigns to encourage people to avoid food waste and to support those in need.

“There are so many families displaced by War that have ended up here in Kinshasa, and we are doing what we can do drive awareness of this challenge and increase solidarity,” Mr Ngudie said.

He added, however, that he knows the food bank is only able to scratch the surface of the overall food security challenge in the city.

Mr Ngudie’s warning of deepening food insecurity was echoed by Ibrahima Diallo, deputy country director for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in the DRC.

Mr Diallo stressed to The Independent that that plummeting foreign aid from the US and other countries has been seriously hindering the efforts of humanitarian groups to address food challenges over the past year.

“In the DRC we have a situation where the needs are rising, but the overall support is declining, with the money that we have available to feed people drastically declining over the past few years,” he said.

“Key drivers are the security crisis in the east, an economic crisis which means that so many people here live in extreme poverty, and the climate crisis, which drives up food prices, creates logistics constraints, and also impacts the economic activities that people depend on to generate income and afford food,” he continued.

Mr Diallo said that WFP DRC deals with one of the UN agency’s “largest and most complex responses”, with ten sub-offices across the country.

The DRC is the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa and is largely blanketed by the Congo Rainforest .

Declining aid receipts mean, however, that WFP is set to only provide food relief to around one million people this year, despite there being some five million people in need of food assistance, of whom four million are in need of emergency food assistance.

In Kinshasa specifically, Mr Diallo said that food insecurity is endemic, with many families being forced to eat just one meal a day, while the food consumed is often of low nutritious value.

“When you look around the city, it is obvious how many people are struggling.

Food prices are simply far too high for so many people, and malnutrition is a huge concern,” he said.

Severe budget restrictions mean that WFP currently has no programmes running around Kinshasa, with the focus instead on parts of the country impacted by conflict.

As well as providing food relief and malnutrition support, WFP also spends aid money on longer term interventions intended to boost climate resilience, such as programmes that encourage climate-smart agriculture or more effective post-harvest handling, as well as other programmes that provide farmers with cash before a climate shock hits .

The current state of “hyper-prioritised” aid work means, however, that WFP is increasingly having to focus on more emergency humanitarian support over less pressing resilience work, Mr Diallo said, which will likely mean that communities in DRC will remain aid-dependent for longer.

The warning comes just days after the annual “Hunger Hotspots” report – an annual report co-published by aid partners including the WFP and the EU – showed that the number of people in ‘food crisis’ around the world has doubled over the past decade , while foreign aid has plummeted to a 10-year low.

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
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