Issue No. 893

 A New Humanitarian Crisis Looms

 On 3 October, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced a drastic 68 percent cut to emergency food assistance in Somalia — reducing coverage from 1.1 million beneficiaries to 350,000, making essential food aid available to fewer than one in ten Somalis. The decision, driven by a USD 98.3 million funding gap through March 2026, comes at a moment when Somalia’s food security crisis is accelerating at an alarming speed. Between July and December 2025, the number of people facing emergency-level hunger (IPC Phase 4) rose by 50 percent, from 624,000 to 921,000, while projections indicate that 4.4 million Somalis will face acute food insecurity by the end of the year. As the lean season approaches (November to March), WFP warns it requires at least USD 98 million to sustain reduced rations for 800,000 people until March 2026.
 
The implications of these cuts are overwhelming given the severity of the crisis already unfolding. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that by mid-2025, that nearly six million Somalis — one in three citizens — required some form of humanitarian support. Meanwhile, the health system that should mitigate this crisis is collapsing under the weight of parallel funding reductions that have severely hampered the delivery of essential assistance. In its July 2025 report, OCHA found that more than 150 health facilities closed between January and June. These closures have left entire communities exposed to disease outbreaks and sharply rising malnutrition, with MSF reporting that it treated nearly 12,000 malnourished children at Bay Regional Hospital between January and June 2025 — a 76 percent increase from the same period in the previous year. The funding cuts have also drastically affected the response to this crisis. Save the Children, the largest NGO provider of health and nutrition services to children in Somalia, announced in May that over a quarter – 27% – of its health and nutrition facilities would stop services in June, putting at least 55,000 children at risk. These converging shocks have placed the humanitarian system in Somalia on the brink of collapse at a moment when needs are sharply escalating. 
 
Against the backdrop of this deteriorating humanitarian landscape, Somalia’s federal government has sought urgent economic relief. Between 16 September and 8 October, Mogadishu formally requested an additional USD 40 million augmentation to its Extended Credit Facility (ECF), explicitly to cushion the combined impact of aid withdrawals and widening budget shortfalls. On 12 October, IMF Mission Chief Ran Bi announced that Somalia and the IMF had reached a staff-level agreement for the augmentation, to be released in two equal tranches at the conclusion of the fourth and fifth ECF reviews, subject to approval by the Executive Board. If approved, it would unlock roughly USD 30 million, completing the USD 100 million package initiated after the country’s HIPC debt relief.
 
Even with this injection however, the macroeconomic outlook still looks bleak. In its statement, the IMF projected that real GDP growth will slow from 4.1 percent in 2024 to 3.0 percent in 2025, driven by the contraction in foreign assistance and the effects of recurrent climate shocks. Foreign grants are expected to fall sharply – declining by 2.7 percentage points of GDP to 30 percent of GDP – as bilateral off-budget support continues to dwindle. The World Bank’s October 2025 Macro Poverty Outlook provides an even bleaker assessment – more than two-thirds of previously supported households have lost access to cash transfers in the past three months, deepening food insecurity. National poverty rates are projected to climb from 52.9 percent in 2024 to 54.4 percent in 2025, effectively reversing two years of barely achieved post-HIPC gains and returning Somalia to 2022 poverty levels.
 
The push for IMF augmentation also exposes deeper structural weaknesses in Somalia’s fiscal architecture. Villa Somalia’s proposed 2026 budget stands at USD 1.19 billion – approximately 70 per cent of which is provided by international donors - a headline figure that masks dramatic inequalities between Villa Somalia and the Federal Member States. Just this week, Hirshabelle’s cabinet approved a 2026 budget of USD 44.3 million, while in early October, Galmudug endorsed a USD 49.7 million budget. Each amount to less than 4 percent of federal allocations, far below even modest thresholds for fiscal viability. These disparities make a coordinated crisis response nearly impossible. 
 
Over the past decade, Somalia has received more than USD 14 billion in humanitarian assistance, yet the architecture of oversight remains opaque. Much of this aid is routed through private companies to enhance access but many of these are closely linked to political elites, blurring the line between humanitarian support and political patronage. As a result, foreign aid has increasingly operated as a currency of loyalty within the country, moving through channels designed to evade scrutiny and limit accountability. Even direct relief mechanisms have been found to be vulnerable to manipulation. A 2024 Counter Extremism Programme investigation into WFP’s cash-transfer programmes found systemic abuses including authorised food retailer contracts frequently allocated through nepotism, with some WFP staff quietly owning the shops they licensed. These vendors then colluded to inflate prices, forcing vulnerable households to purchase goods at well above market value. 
 
By controlling relief infrastructure and channelling foreign-funded aid through its own agencies, Villa Somalia has weaponised humanitarian assistance as Federal Member States remain dependent, under-resourced and politically constrained. This has also been seen in bilaterial initiatives – in early October, China inaugurated the Central Food Reserve Warehouse in Mogadishu, an advanced facility holding 1,226 tonnes of grain and emergency supplies earmarked for the Al-Shabaab-affected Hiran region. Though presented as a symbol of Sino–Somali cooperation, the warehouse routes all distributions through the federal disaster management agency. Although this is presented as promoting efficiency, it in practice guarantees federal control over crisis response. 
 
Framed as a funding shortfall, Somalia’s escalating humanitarian crisis cannot be separated from the broader governance crisis. The abrupt foreign funding cuts this past year have laid bare what successive federal administrations have masked – that Somalia's 'state' exists primarily as a vehicle for rent extraction from external donors. Unless the federal leadership shifts from its centralisation approach to pragmatic federalism and accountable governance, Somalia’s sovereignty risks becoming performative and the cost will continue to be borne by the millions of citizens facing death, starvation, displacement, disease, and conflict.

The Somali Wire