WFP: 28.8 Million People Face Acute Food Insecurity in DR Congo

The scale of the crisis, with 3.6 million people already in emergency conditions, signals that existing humanitarian funding and access constraints have not kept pace with the deteriorating...

The World Food Programme reported on November 13, 2026, that 28.8 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are experiencing acute food insecurity, making the DRC one of the largest hunger emergencies recorded globally. Of that total, 3.6 million people are classified in emergency conditions, the second-most severe category in the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale, according to Anatolia Agency.

The WFP defines acute food insecurity as a condition in which a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their life or livelihood in immediate danger. Emergency-level classification, Phase 4 on the IPC scale, indicates that households face large gaps in food consumption, with deteriorating or depleted assets and very high levels of acute malnutrition.

The DRC has faced compounding drivers of food insecurity for more than two decades. Ongoing armed conflict, particularly in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri, has displaced millions of people and disrupted agricultural production. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously reported that the DRC hosts one of the world's largest internal displacement crises, with over 7 million internally displaced persons recorded in earlier assessments.

Humanitarian access remains a persistent constraint. Armed groups and infrastructure deficits in the Congo Basin's remote areas have limited the ability of organizations including the WFP, UNICEF, and Médecins Sans Frontières to reach affected populations. The WFP has previously noted that road networks in the DRC are among the most limited on the continent relative to the country's geographic size.

Agricultural disruption compounds the access problem. The DRC is classified as a low-income, food-deficit country by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Subsistence farming accounts for a substantial share of caloric intake for rural populations, and displacement events that force families off their land translate directly into reduced food production in the following growing seasons.

The 28.8 million figure represents a significant share of the DRC's estimated population, which the World Bank placed at approximately 102 million in its most recent national estimate. That means roughly 28 percent of the population is currently classified as acutely food insecure, based on those figures.

Funding shortfalls have been a recurring obstacle for humanitarian operations in the DRC. The UN's 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan for the DRC was reported by OCHA to be among the most underfunded globally, receiving less than half of its requested contributions by mid-year. The 2026 funding situation has not yet been fully reported, and a complete accounting of contributions against requirements would be needed to determine whether the gap has narrowed.

The WFP's emergency classification threshold carries operational implications. When a population crosses into Phase 4, humanitarian protocols generally call for the prioritization of immediate food transfers and therapeutic feeding programs over longer-term resilience interventions. Whether sufficient resources exist to execute that response at the scale the current figures require is not confirmed in available reporting.

The conflict in eastern DRC has drawn involvement from multiple regional actors, including Rwanda, which the United Nations Group of Experts has previously linked to support for the M23 armed group. The Congolese government has disputed territorial control in multiple eastern zones, and diplomatic efforts brokered by the African Union and the East African Community have produced ceasefire agreements that were not fully implemented, according to past UN Security Council reporting.

The WFP did not specify in the reported figures what proportion of the 28.8 million people currently have access to humanitarian assistance. That breakdown would be necessary to assess the gap between need and actual service delivery, and would be contained in the full WFP country report from which the Anatolia Agency drew its reporting.