U.S. approves $32.5 million aid package to combat hunger in Nigeria

The United States has approved $32.5 million in assistance to Nigeria to help address hunger, in a rare shift in U.S. foreign policy since President Donald Trump suspended most aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The funding will provide food assistance and nutritional support to internally displaced people in conflict-affected areas, the U.S mission to Nigeria said in a statement Wednesday.

Insecurity and funding cuts have put northern Nigeria in the grip of “an unprecedented hunger crisis” that could leave more than 1.3 million people without food and force the closure of 150 nutrition clinics in Borno state, Margot van der Velden, the World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in July.

In July, the WFP suspended food assistance across crisis-hit West and Central African countries as a result of U.S. and other global aid cuts that are grinding its operations to a halt.

Food stocks were projected to end around September for most of the affected countries, leaving millions of vulnerable people potentially without emergency aid, according to the WFP.

The U.S. mission said the donation would provide food and nutrition assistance to 764,205 beneficiaries across north-east and northwest of Africa’s most populous country.

“This includes complementary nutrition top-ups for 41,569 pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls and 43,235 children through electronic food vouchers,” it said.

In recent months, there has been an uptick in attacks on communities in the northwest and north-central regions of Africa’s most populous country, where farmers often clash over limited access to land and water. An attack in north-central Nigeria killed 150 people in June.

The West African country is also dealing with an insurgency in its northeast region that has resulted in the death of around 35,000 civilians and the displacement of more than 2 million others, according to the United Nations.