The protein system
The region's food supply starts with locally grown crops and grazing animals. Farmers produced 4.19 million tonnes of dry beans and 2.84 million tonnes of groundnuts in 2024.[5] Cattle, goats, sheep and camels generally feed on pasture and crop residues, so their production relies less on imported grain than intensive poultry systems do. Milk output reached 26.0 million tonnes, including 2.18 million tonnes of camel milk; farms also produced 1.81 million tonnes of beef and 899,000 tonnes of sheep and goat meat.[5]
Fish adds another source of protein. Wild catches totalled 1.46 million tonnes in 2024, while aquaculture produced 290,000 tonnes.[8, 9] Much of the catch comes from inland waters, including Lake Victoria, where Nile perch landings have fallen sharply even as smaller fish catches rose.[10] This source matters particularly where households have limited access to meat or dairy, but declining stocks make it a fragile substitute.
Trade needs differ across the region. Tanzania and Uganda produce most of the protein they use, while Kenya imports soybean meal for its larger formal feed industry.[3, 7, 12, 14] Conflict-affected Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia face a different problem: even locally produced food may be inaccessible when people cannot farm, move or buy it safely.[18, 19, 28] The same regional total therefore contains both food-producing areas and places where diets are already severely constrained.
Durable domestic capacity:
Local production supplies most protein in Tanzania and Uganda, where protein self-sufficiency is 96.0 and 92.6 per cent respectively.[3, 7, 12]
High local production shares have not prevented severe hunger in several members. stands at 56.5 per cent in Somalia and 34.9 per cent in Kenya.[4]
Farming across the region is overwhelmingly rain-fed. Only 4.9 per cent of the region's 56.6 million hectares of arable land is equipped for irrigation, and the three largest rain-fed members sit below 5 per cent: Uganda 0.1 per cent, Tanzania 2.7 and Kenya 4.3.[36] Output therefore tracks two rainy seasons directly, and Somalia's 2025 deyr harvest came in 75 per cent below average at 15,600 tonnes.[18] Sudan is the exception at 8.8 per cent, in the Gezira and other Nile schemes the war has disrupted.[36]
The largest lake fishery is under strain. Nile perch landings across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda fell 51 per cent from 1990 to 2023, while smaller silver cyprinid (dagaa) catches rose sevenfold; Kenyan inland catch fell 42 per cent in a decade.[10] At the last assessment, 37.5 per cent of Western Indian Ocean stocks were overfished.[11]
Conflict keeps much of the region's food out of reach. Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia contain 28 per cent of its population and 31 per cent of protein consumption; all three are affected by armed conflict. In Sudan, 22–23 million people needed food assistance through September 2026, with credible famine risk in nine areas.[28]
Resource headroom:
Most livestock graze or use crop residues, so little cereal competes with direct food use. Kenya, the largest formal feed market, imported 111,845 tonnes of soybean meal and 421 tonnes of fishmeal in 2024.[14] Farmed tilapia and catfish use mainly plant-based feed; aquaculture produced 290,000 tonnes in 2024.[9, 14]
Fertiliser use remains very low in most members: 0.18 kilograms of nutrient per hectare in South Sudan and 2 in Uganda, compared with 17.6 in Tanzania and 43.5 in Kenya.[6] Better yields could add food without expanding farmland, if farmers can obtain and afford inputs.
Land and water are tight in several densely populated or dry members. Rwanda and Burundi have less than 0.1 hectares of arable land per person; Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan have under 400 cubic metres of renewable freshwater per person, far below the 1,700 cubic metre stress threshold.[12] Population grew 93.9 per cent between 2000 and 2024, while arable land grew 45.9 per cent; arable land per person consequently fell 24.7 per cent.[36, 46]
Irrigation covers only 4.9 per cent of arable land, down from 6.1 per cent in 2000, despite the expansion of farmland.[36] Only Kenya and Tanzania increased their irrigated share; elsewhere it fell or stagnated.[36] Kenya's Galana-Kulalu project illustrates the delivery gap: launched in 2015 with a one-million-acre target, it had just 2,500 acres operating by November 2025.[47, 48]
Sudan and South Sudan have the region's most arable land per person, but conflict makes much of it unusable. In Sudan, the 924,000-hectare Gezira scheme lost 9 per cent of cultivated land between 2019/20 and 2023/24; wheat output fell 58 per cent after fighting reached Wad Madani, with only a fragile recovery through 2025.[49, 50] South Sudan uses just 0.18 kilograms of nutrient per hectare and irrigates 0.8 per cent of its arable land.[6, 36]
Low fertiliser use also reflects dependence on imports. Hormuz tanker traffic fell by more than 90 per cent after March 2026; about half of Kenya's nitrogen imports by value came from suppliers inside the strait, and more than a fifth of Tanzania's from Qatar alone.[33, 14]
In six members representing 87.7 per cent of the population, agriculture, forestry and fishing receive 10.7 per cent of bank lending, compared with 4 per cent across Africa.[45] The share remains below agriculture's contribution to GDP in several members.[45]
Import exposure:
Cereal imports cover just 1.8 per cent of consumption in Tanzania, 49.5 per cent in Kenya and all of it in Djibouti.[4]
The region exports valuable animal protein while many households rely on cheaper staples. Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti supplied 82.1 per cent of Saudi Arabia's live sheep and goat imports in 2024; Somalia also sold Oman USD 161 million of livestock.[15] Uganda and Tanzania exported USD 179 million of fish fillets, mainly Nile perch, to Europe and Israel.[16]
Exposure is concentrated in wheat and rice. Somalia grows no wheat and imports 92.2 per cent of its cereal consumption; Kenya imports virtually all its wheat.[13] Russia supplied most wheat imports for Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in 2024, while India and Pakistan dominated Kenyan rice imports.[14] The cost is especially difficult to finance in Somalia, where food imports equal 266 per cent of merchandise exports, and in Burundi, at 81 per cent.[4]
Most imported wheat arrives through Suez and Bab el-Mandeb, a route exposed to attacks since November 2023; UNCTAD recorded Gulf of Aden ship tonnage down more than 70 per cent between December 2023 and February 2024.[37] By contrast, 93.6 per cent of Kenya's maize imports came overland from Tanzania in 2024, avoiding maritime chokepoints.[14]
Upstream dependence:
The region has no domestic nitrogen-fertiliser production; Tanzania produced 18,028 tonnes of P2O5 in 2023.[6] On the ground that dependence bites lightly, because application rates are among the lowest on earth, and the ruminant system supplying most animal protein uses indigenous genetics, pasture and crop residues and buys almost nothing. Even dairy trade is regional, with 82.8 per cent of the value of Kenyan milk powder imports coming from Uganda.[14]
Energy is the dependence that matters here, and its concentration is the weakness. Kenya imported 4.91 million tonnes of refined petroleum worth USD 4.13 billion in 2024, 52.4 per cent of it by value from the United Arab Emirates, 12.2 from Oman and 11.6 from Kuwait.[14] That fuel runs the mills, pumps, cold chain and the haulage that carries Tanzanian maize to Nairobi. Fertiliser follows the same map: Saudi Arabia supplied 27.2 per cent and Qatar 22.5 per cent of the value of Kenya's 325,590 tonnes of nitrogenous fertiliser, and Qatar 21.3, Russia 19.1 and Oman 14.5 per cent of Tanzania's 416,960 tonnes.[14]
Hormuz disruption is a current supply risk. About half of Kenya's nitrogen imports by value and 64 per cent of refined petroleum imports came from suppliers inside the strait.[14] No large domestic nitrogen project is under construction in the region; Ethiopia's 3-million-tonne Gode complex, agreed in 2025, is the nearby exception.[38, 39]
Access and affordability:
Healthy diets were unaffordable for 76.0 per cent of people across the seven members with estimates in 2025, covering 74.7 per cent of the regional population.[41] That is 168.5 million people. Rates reached 93.9 per cent in South Sudan and 90.9 per cent in Burundi. Undernourishment averaged 26.9 per cent where measured, led by Somalia at 56.5 per cent; averaged 28.4 per cent, highest in Burundi and Eritrea.[4]
Prices eased after the first bimodal harvests in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Tanzania, but rose in Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan.[43] Kenyan food inflation was 8.6 per cent in the year to June 2026, up from 7.7 per cent in November 2025.[44] Sudan's situation worsened most: by March 2026 its local food basket was up 21 per cent year on year, while wheat flour, meat and groundnut prices rose faster as the parallel-market currency fell 43 per cent and besieged areas lost access to food.[42, 56]
Transport costs keep most regional cereal markets from tracking world prices closely, though local prices remain volatile.[51, 52] Kenya is an exception: Nairobi retail pasteurised milk rose 16.3 per cent between 2021 and 2023, while the shilling-converted FAO Food Price Index rose 26.3 per cent.[52, 53, 54] In Uganda and Tanzania, the local-currency world-price benchmark rose by less than 4 per cent, while Ugandan retail beans rose 49.3 per cent and Tanzanian wholesale maize rose 119.1 per cent, pointing to domestic pressures.[53, 54]
Food prices continued rising after global prices fell: between March 2022 and March 2026 the regional index rose 211.2 per cent, against a 19.7 per cent fall in the FAO world index.[53, 55] Even excluding Sudan and South Sudan, prices rose 32.9 per cent. Sudan's index rose 973.9 per cent, while the parallel-market currency fell 43 per cent year on year.[42, 54] Buying power also differs: milk in Nairobi cost 1.3 hours at the minimum wage, against 5.5 hours for beans in Uganda.[54, 57] These wage comparisons cover formal workers, while most people work informally or on small farms.
Shock endurance:
Cereal stocks across five members with USDA balance sheets cover about 33 days of consumption.[13] In 2024, Kenya held four , against about three weeks in Burundi and less than four weeks in Djibouti.[12]
Humanitarian aid is the backstop, but plans were only 29–40 per cent funded in July 2026.[30] WFP needed another USD 579 million for Sudan through October and projected 825,000 children with severe acute malnutrition there in 2026.[31] Somalia's operation faced a critical shortfall while 6.5 million people were in crisis.[32] FEWS NET's broader East Africa outlook, which includes Ethiopia, counted more than 12.8 million displaced people.[27]
Tanzania's forecast 1.0-million-tonne maize surplus for supplies Kenya and provides an important overland buffer.[13, 14] Debt service absorbs 27.2 per cent of Kenya's export earnings and 13.9 per cent of Uganda's.[3, 7, 12]
Trajectory
Fertiliser and yield are central to future production. The region applies between 0.18 and 43.5 kilograms of nutrient per hectare against a world average many times higher, so higher yields could add protein without expanding farmland.[6] Raising yields requires imported nitrogen at a price smallholders will pay, which is what the 2026 Gulf disruption threatens,[33] while the Gode complex under construction in Ethiopia would add regional nitrogen production.[38, 39]
Fish offer a smaller gain, and it is already happening. Lake Victoria supports Africa's largest freshwater fishery and its highest-value stock has halved since 1990,[10] but aquaculture is a working substitute: Tanzanian farmed output rose from 10,166 tonnes in 2013 to 138,607 in 2024, a thirteenfold increase, and Rwandan from 1,165 to 8,392.[9] Because the fish are raised mainly on plant-based feed, that growth adds to supply instead of drawing down the wild stock.
Peace would matter more than either. Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia account for 31 per cent of regional protein consumption and nearly all famine risk.[3, 12] A settlement in Sudan could restore a 51.7-million-person market, revive livestock exports and reduce pressure on humanitarian budgets.[15, 17, 30] Continued conflict would deepen the current supply and aid shortfalls.
Country notes
Kenya. The most import-exposed large economy: protein self-sufficiency 70.0 per cent, cereal import dependency 49.5 per cent, wheat effectively wholly imported with Russia at 81.5 per cent, and inland catch down 42 per cent since 2013.[3, 13, 14, 10] Offsetting that, the region's largest reserves at USD 12.4 billion, the heaviest fertiliser use and 93.6 per cent of maize from Tanzania.[12, 6, 14] Still 3.7 million people in crisis-level hunger or worse in mid-2026.[20, 29]
Tanzania. The strongest member and the region's buffer: protein self-sufficiency 96.0 per cent,[3] cereal import dependency 1.8 per cent,[4] 39.1 million cattle,[7] 12.8 million tonnes of cereals forecast for 2026[21] and the only fertiliser nutrient produced regionally.[6] Only 5 per cent of the analysed population is severely food insecure through January 2027.[21] Wheat is the gap, 1.55 million tonnes imported with Russia at 66.1 per cent.[13, 14]
Uganda. Near self-sufficient at 92.6 per cent protein, with the region's highest fish consumption at 15.4 kilograms a head in 2023, 538,160 tonnes of capture and 103,420 of aquaculture, and a maize surplus sold into Kenya and South Sudan.[3, 8, 9, 13] At 2.0 kilograms of nutrient per hectare, it has large room to raise yields.[6] It hosts more than 2 million refugees and asylum seekers, about 1 million of them from South Sudan, of whom 712,000 were in crisis-level hunger or worse to February 2026.[22]
Rwanda. Protein self-sufficiency of 83.7 per cent on 0.083 hectares of arable land per person, through intensive beans and aquaculture that grew sevenfold in a decade.[3, 12, 5, 9] Animal protein of 6.3 grams a day is second lowest in the region.[3] The 2025 harvest of 943,000 tonnes was 12 per cent above average, FAO calls the country generally food secure, and 4.2 months of import cover is the region's best current reading.[23, 12]
Burundi. The 2025 cereal harvest was 789,000 tonnes, 5 per cent below average.[24] The 2026A season brought maize losses near 50 per cent and bean losses of 80 per cent in affected regions, with 1.14 million people projected in crisis-level hunger from January to March 2026.[24] Food imports equal 81 per cent of merchandise exports and import cover was about three weeks in 2023.[4, 12] Beans are effectively the whole protein system.[5]
Somalia. The most exposed member: no wheat grown, 1.15 million tonnes imported plus 650,000 of rice, cereal import dependency 92.2 per cent against 147,700 tonnes of output.[13, 18] Undernourishment 56.5 per cent, 6.5 million in crisis-level hunger or worse with 2 million in emergency hunger.[4, 18] Food imports cost 266 per cent of merchandise exports and no reserves exist.[4, 12] Livestock is the one major asset, USD 426 million of live small ruminants sold to Saudi Arabia and Oman in 2024.[15]
Djibouti. A near-total food importer: cereal import dependency 100 per cent, protein self-sufficiency 12.7 per cent, arable land 0.003 hectares per person.[4, 3, 12] Protein supply is the region's highest at 75.5 grams because it can pay: GDP per capita is USD 3,906, 1.7 times Kenya's and the highest in the region, funded by Ethiopian transit fees and foreign bases.[3, 12, 35] Import cover is under four weeks, and it sits on Bab el-Mandeb.[12, 25]
Eritrea. Fertiliser use is 1.87 kilograms of nutrient per hectare; capture fisheries and aquaculture together produced under 2,500 tonnes.[6, 8, 9]
South Sudan. A herd of 14.3 million cattle supports livestock livelihoods, but food access is severe: 57 per cent of the population was in crisis-level hunger or worse during the 2025 lean season, with about 83,000 people in Catastrophe and credible famine risk in Akobo, Nyirol, Nasir and Ulang.[7, 19, 40] It has the best water endowment at 2,359 cubic metres per person, uses 0.18 kilograms of nutrient per hectare and irrigates 0.8 per cent of its arable land.[12, 6, 36] Reserves were USD 16 million in 2024.[12]
Sudan. A major livestock and sorghum producer, Sudan also imports 2.7 million tonnes of cereals and supplies 45.3 per cent of Saudi Arabia's live small-ruminant imports.[5, 7, 15, 17] The 2024 cereal harvest held up under wartime conditions, but 22–23 million people needed assistance, 8.6 million were displaced and 825,000 children were projected to face severe acute malnutrition.[17, 28, 31]