The protein system
Many people get too little protein. Supply ranges from 45.0 grams per person per day in Liberia and 52.1 in Guinea-Bissau to 92.6 in Burkina Faso, against an African average of 65.7.[1] reaches 35.5 per cent in Liberia.[6] The food base still rests on 48 million tonnes of cereals, 69 million cattle and 2.73 million tonnes of wild-caught fish.[7, 4, 12, 2]
Rice and wheat are the main imports. Senegal imports 1.66 million tonnes of milled rice and grows 645,000 tonnes.[14] Côte d'Ivoire is forecast to import 1.7 million tonnes, Guinea 1.15 million and Ghana around 950,000.[15, 16] No member grows wheat on a commercial scale: all 1.09 million tonnes Ghana used in 2025 were imported.[13]
The rest of the protein comes from rangeland, rain and the sea. FAO's earlier estimates put fish at 63 per cent of animal protein in Sierra Leone and Ghana.[31] Fish farms produced 159,676 tonnes in 2024, only 5.5 per cent of the region's fish, and 76 per cent of that was in Ghana.[3]
Durable domestic capacity:
Cereal output in 2025 was 5 to 27 per cent above the five-year average in fourteen of the fifteen members. Only Cabo Verde fell short, with a maize crop about 40 per cent below average.[12] The region also has 69 million cattle[4] and 2.73 million tonnes of wild fish.[2] Even so, protein output is too low and easily hit. Protein supply is below requirement across most of the coast,[1] no wheat is grown[13] and rice falls well short of demand.[14, 15] Worst of all, the fish that supply much of the animal protein are running out. Ghana's small-pelagic landings had fallen below a tenth of their 1992 level by 2023, shared among 12,000 canoes and more than 100,000 fishers.[21]
Conflict is cutting output. Mali's rice area fell 13 per cent in , with falls of 56 per cent in Gao and 35 per cent in Mopti, partly because insecurity kept farmers off their land.[15] Burkina Faso has around 2.1 million displaced people, and towns under blockade have farmland their people cannot reach.[33] Harvest figures can look good while many people cannot get to their fields.
Resource headroom:
Livestock and fishing use little bought-in feed. All the maize Ghana feeds to animals comes to 565,000 tonnes, against 6.2 million tonnes of cereal output.[13] Farmers use very little fertiliser: 0.77 kilograms per hectare in Niger, 2.7 in Sierra Leone and 8.5 in Mali. Cereal yields are 577 kilograms per hectare in Niger and 1,198 in Burkina Faso, far below the 2,688 Ghana already achieves.[7] The coast has plenty of water, with 37,221 cubic metres of renewable freshwater per person a year in Liberia and 16,080 in Guinea.[7]
Three things limit that room to grow. The Sahel is very dry, with 82 cubic metres of water per person in Mauritania and 138 in Niger.[7] The sea has passed its peak: three of eight assessed small-pelagic stocks are overfished,[8] and the EU's fishing deal with Mauritania cut the allowed small-pelagic catch from 300,000 to 225,000 tonnes.[19] Population is growing faster than yields, at 3.28 per cent a year in Niger and 2.94 in Mali.[7] FAO expects fish eaten per person in Africa to keep falling, because supply cannot keep up with population growth of over 25 per cent to 2032.[9, 10]
The quickest source of extra protein, small pelagic fish, is being turned into fishmeal for export. Mauritania's fishmeal output peaked at 128,789 tonnes in 2020. In 2021, more than half its pelagic catch went to fishmeal plants, and it takes about five kilograms of fish to make one kilogram of meal.[17, 39] An FAO working group has recommended that Mauritania's ban on using sardinella for fishmeal be extended across the region.[8]
Conflict also holds yields down. Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have about a third of the region's people, but insecurity keeps farmers off parts of their land and cuts them off from credit and inputs.[7]
Irrigation and farm lending are weak well beyond the conflict states. Land equipped for irrigation covered 1.75 per cent of cropland in 2024, barely up from 1.51 per cent in 2000, while cropland grew 52 per cent.[59] Mauritania's irrigated area has not changed in 25 years. Only Ghana made big gains, from 0.56 to 3 per cent.[59] In all twelve members with figures, farms get less bank lending than their share of the economy. In some it is falling: in Niger, farm lending relative to farming's share of the economy has fallen by three-quarters since 1991, and in Ghana it has almost halved even as total lending grew.[60]
Population has grown faster than farmland. Between 2000 and 2024 the population rose 92 per cent and cropland 52 per cent, so cropland per person fell 21 per cent.[59] It fell in eleven of fifteen members, most sharply in Mauritania and Niger, and rose in Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, The Gambia and Sierra Leone.[59] Big irrigation schemes have fallen short. Mali's Office du Niger was set up in 1932 to irrigate up to 1.85 million hectares and has reached about 100,000, though it still grows about 40 per cent of Mali's rice. Work on the 25,000-hectare irrigation part of Ghana's USD 993 million Pwalugu dam has not begun six years after funding, and the contractor has left the site.[61]
Import exposure:
Most food arrives through open Atlantic ports, and home-grown staples limit the risk from distant sea lanes. The bigger risk is that rice and wheat each come mainly from a few suppliers. Senegal took 58 per cent of its rice from India and 17 per cent from Thailand in 2024. India's 2022 curbs on broken-rice exports showed how one supplier's decision can hit a country that imports 1.66 million tonnes a year.[14] All wheat is imported. Turkey and Canada supplied 77 per cent of Ghana's 1.09 million tonnes,[13] and Russia shipped 1.7 million tonnes to the wider region in one season.[34] In Niger, food is 37.9 per cent of merchandise imports and GDP per head is USD 730, so the country cannot outbid richer buyers.[7]
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formally left ECOWAS on 29 January 2025 and put a 0.5 per cent levy on goods from ECOWAS members.[29, 30] Niger has also banned cereal exports outside the Alliance of Sahel States since October 2024.[12] All three still rely on coastal ports in neighbouring states, and the split adds friction to those routes.
Upstream dependence:
Today's protein supply needs few imported inputs. Cattle, sheep and goats graze open rangeland,[4] small-scale fishing needs fuel and nets rather than feed,[2] and pulses fix their own nitrogen. The region imported about one million tonnes of fertiliser in 2022, up from 345,016 tonnes a year in the 1990s.[26] Across Africa, farmers apply 18 kilograms per hectare, against the Abuja Declaration target of 50.[27]
Low input use is a sign of poor access, not self-reliance. Any move to higher yields or more fish farming depends on imported urea, feed, young fish and day-old chicks.[7, 3] The region makes no fertiliser, beyond phosphate rock mined in Senegal and Togo. Benin gets more than 45 per cent of its fertiliser from Russia and Ukraine, and urea prices rose about 4.5 times after 2020.[26] Ghana pays around 30 per cent more for imported feed, is short of some 50 million young fish a year and produces tilapia at USD 1.51 a kilogram, against USD 0.78 to 1.29 in the leading producers.[38]
Access and affordability:
In 2024, 60.8 per cent of people across the fifteen members . The share ranged from 86.7 per cent in Niger to 45.0 per cent in The Gambia.[42]
Undernourishment averaged 11.8 per cent, from 5.1 per cent in Senegal, 6.3 per cent in Ghana and 9.1 per cent in Togo to 35.5 per cent in Liberia.[6] averaged 25.9 per cent, below the African average of 30.7 per cent. It was under 18 per cent in Senegal, Ghana, The Gambia and Mauritania and 47.7 per cent in Niger.[43, 44] Prices swing sharply. Ghana's food inflation was 27.8 per cent in December 2024 and 26.5 per cent in March 2025, then fell to 2.3 per cent in March 2026 and 3.3 per cent in May.[57, 58, 45] Conflict in Mali, Burkina Faso and western Niger also makes it harder to get food to people, as do long routes from the coast.[33, 29, 30]
Most households eat millet, sorghum, cassava and yams, whose prices depend on local harvests and on trade limits within the region.[62, 63] In Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, imported rice matters too. Ivorian retail rice prices rose 21.7 per cent between the 2021 and 2023 annual averages, while world cereal prices rose 9.2 per cent in local currency. Ghana and Sierra Leone faced bigger currency falls. The cedi lost almost 60 per cent of its value against the dollar between 2021 and 2024, while the CFA franc, pegged to the euro and used by 151 million people, lost 9.3 per cent.[56, 65, 66, 67]
That currency split shaped what happened when world prices fell. In the eight CFA countries, food prices rose 11.5 per cent between March 2022 and March 2026, and staple grain prices came down. By May 2026, retail millet in Niger was 27.4 per cent cheaper and wholesale millet in Bamako 21.1 per cent cheaper. In the other members, food prices rose 106.8 per cent, and more than 140 per cent in Sierra Leone and Ghana.[64, 65, 66] The peg let Sahel prices fall back, but it did not make them stable. In 2025, Niger's retail millet price swung 63.5 per cent between its March high and December low, and Mali's 45.5 per cent, more than world prices moved that year.[66] In Dakar, a kilogram of beef on the bone cost XOF 4,714 in July 2026, or 12.7 hours of work at Senegal's minimum wage of XOF 64,175 a month. In Niger, a kilogram of fresh carp cost 9.2 hours at a minimum wage of XOF 42,000.[66, 68] Few workers earn a formal wage, so for most farming and trading households the burden is heavier still.
Shock endurance:
Hunger is already acute. Between October and December 2025, 41.78 million people were in crisis-level hunger or worse, and 52.8 million were projected for the June to August 2026 lean season.[11] Thirteen of fifteen members have GDP per head below USD 2,500,[7] and there is no real food reserve. After eight years, the ECOWAS Regional Food Security Reserve holds 74,162 tonnes, roughly 0.3 kilograms for each of this region's 222 million people, and releases 500 to about 8,300 tonnes at a time.[24] A second scheme, RESOGEST, commits 5 per cent of national stocks in seven pilot countries.[25] Food aid has filled the gap, and it is shrinking: WFP suspended help for two million people in April 2025 and needed USD 453 million for the following six months.[28] Guinea-Bissau pays for its rice imports with cashews, which earn over 90 per cent of its export income,[36] so a fall in cashew prices quickly becomes a food problem.
Money to pay for imports is limited. The eight members of the West African monetary union hold pooled reserves of 6.1 months of imports in 2025, backed by the French Treasury's guarantee of the CFA franc.[56] Governments have little room to spend, though. Niger collects 9.1 per cent of GDP in tax, against a union target of 20 per cent,[47] and hidden debts have pushed Senegal's public debt to 118.9 per cent of GDP.[49] In Mali, a militant blockade of the routes from Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire in late 2025 cut fuel supplies and reduced transport activity by 9.3 per cent. The budget deficit widened to 2.9 per cent of GDP and revenue fell to 18.5 per cent of GDP, even as debt fell to 42.3 per cent.[48]
Outside the union, reserves range from 7.8 months of imports in Cabo Verde[55] to 1.7 months in Sierra Leone, where debt service took more than all government revenue in 2025.[52] Liberia held 1.8 months,[53] Ghana 5.7 months,[46] Mauritania 5.6 months excluding mining,[50] The Gambia 4.5 months[51] and Guinea 3.6 months, up from 1.4 at the end of 2024.[54] No member has a social safety net that could scale up in a crisis. The region has relied on WFP instead.[28]
Households do have ways to cope. Diets are broad, and rain-fed local harvests do not depend on trade. Local grains stand in for imported rice: Niger's millet and sorghum prices fell 15 to 35 per cent between August and December 2025 and were cheaper than imported rice.[12] Food aid clearly works where it is funded. In Mali, crisis-level hunger rose 64 per cent where rations were cut and fell 34 per cent where they continued.[28]
Trajectory
Mauritania is cutting fishmeal production. Output fell from 128,789 tonnes in 2020 to 59,158 in 2024, and the number of working plants from 44 licensed in 2021 to eight by September 2025.[17] If Senegal and The Gambia followed with the limits FAO's working group recommends,[8] it would be one of the cheapest ways to protect local protein supply. The EU gave Senegal a yellow card for illegal fishing in May 2024 and let its fishing deal lapse that November.[22, 23] Governments are also acting on farming, from Senegal's 2025-2034 food sovereignty strategy and Sierra Leone's Feed Salone programme[12, 14] to free fertiliser for Ghanaian farmers in 2026, which will show whether cost is what keeps yields low.[13]
Other trends work against this. The exit of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from ECOWAS takes the three most conflict-hit members out of the regional reserve system just when it would matter most,[29, 30] and humanitarian funding is falling.[28] Another Indian curb on rice exports would hit the region hard.
Country notes
Senegal. Rice dependence is concentrated on India, while a large share of landed fish is exported and the fleet is substantially foreign-flagged.[14, 20]
Mauritania. The region's largest fish producer has diverted much of its pelagic catch into fishmeal exports; it is also the driest member.[2, 7, 17]
Mali. A leading cereal and cattle producer, but conflict keeps farmers from their land and has displaced hundreds of thousands.[4, 12, 15, 33]
Niger. High livestock protein and cattle numbers contrast with minimal fertiliser use, very low crop yields, poverty and rapid population growth.[1, 4, 7, 41]
Burkina Faso. Above-average cereal output[12] and high reported protein supply[1] mask displacement, acute hunger[33] and dependence on coastal transit.[29, 30]
Ghana. The aquaculture leader also has a severe small-pelagic decline and imports all commercial wheat.[3, 13, 21]
Côte d'Ivoire. The region's strongest fertiliser use and second-highest yields accompany large rice imports and a small capture fishery.[2, 7, 16]
Guinea. Abundant freshwater is scarcely mobilised: fertiliser use is low and rice imports exceed domestic production.[7, 15]
Benin. Acute food insecurity is low, but Benin relies on a poultry re-export trade and on fertiliser from Russia and Ukraine.[12, 26, 32]
Togo. A thin livestock and fisheries base leaves hundreds of thousands acutely food insecure.[2, 4, 12, 41]
Liberia. The weakest protein outcomes[1, 6] and a small cattle herd[4] contrast with abundant freshwater.[7] Most rice is imported.[35]
Sierra Leone. Fish is an important protein source, but aquaculture and fertiliser use remain very low and acute food insecurity is widespread.[3, 5, 7, 12]
The Gambia. Fish supply is significant, but fishmeal production is associated with falling local availability and cereal output is small.[2, 7, 12, 18]
Guinea-Bissau. Cashews fund rice imports, leaving food security exposed to one export crop; landed fish largely leaves the country.[2, 5, 36]
Cabo Verde. The region's highest income and lowest population growth coexist with almost no maize production and strong dependence on canned-fish exports.[7, 12, 37, 40]