At the start of the year 2026, there was a very serious humanitarian crisis already in Africa.

Look at any listing of the countries most affected by humanitarian crisis and you find that countries of Africa have an exceptionally high representation in this.

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It is increasingly clear that droughts and other disasters in times of climate change as well as distorted development patterns prevalent today (but with their roots in colonial and neo-colonial policies) are a chronic cause of this humanitarian crisis. However very violent conflicts and wars have emerged as the most important factor in the most extreme distress suffered by people. This is clearly avoidable, but the tragic reality is that in the absence of strong, well thought and continuing peace processes, actually the distress caused by conflict, civil war and war has been steadily increasing.

Describing the situation in Sudan at the beginning of 2026, a statement by the WHO dated 9 January 2026 (titled ‘Sudan: 1000 days of war deepen the world’s worst health and humanitarian crisis’) said that 20 million people need health assistance and 20 million people desperately need food. On the whole 33.4 million people of Sudan would need humanitarian assistance in 2026 (out of a total population of about 53 million), this note said. 13.6 million persons had been displaced by the Sudan civil war at this time. This note also said that health facilities had suffered extensive damage in the course of the civil war.

Now in the first 150 days of this year 2026, conflicts and wars, particularly civil wars, have worsened further, and the humanitarian and health crisis has also worsened in several countries of this continent.

In addition, several reports have noted the big shortfall in humanitarian assistance as well as the increasing difficulties in reaching aid to remote places affected by humanitarian crisis situations, including increasing threats faced by aid workers and staff themselves.

Now with the outbreak of Ebola, apart from the direct harm caused by this disease, this is leading to many restrictions being imposed which will have an adverse impact on the ability to reach aid to many places of humanitarian crisis.

Some of the initial estimates of people needing humanitarian assistance in Africa this year were on the lower side as due to the availability of lower budgets the UN and some other agencies had to lower the targets of people they could possibly reach. Keeping this in view and the worsening since then, my mid-year estimate is that about 200 million people in Africa urgently need humanitarian assistance in a total population of about 1600 million (1.6 billion), or in other words one out of eight persons of Africa needs humanitarian assistance.

Source: Global Research