The start of 2026 has not been easy for the residents of Madina Camp, on the outskirts of the city of Baidoa, in Somalia’s South West State.
According to Adan Adan Abdi, a sub-camp leader of around 50 people, there is an “urgent need” for both food and water, with thousands having migrated from rural areas to camps such as his amid a catastrophic drought that has devastated Somalia.
“The situation across these camps is the same: The hardship is severe, and people are extremely hungry and thirsty” he says. Families have been going day to day without food to cook, he adds, while the only work available at the moment is to head deep into the bush to collect firewood to sell at the market.
Pointing to a water truck that has just delivered water from the Juba Foundation, a local NGO, he adds: “The water we received today is the only assistance we have seen. As you can see now, people are fighting to get water from the water trucks.”
Abdi’s story - collected exclusively for The Independent via the NGO Mercy Corps - is one of many that have emerged from a climate-driven humanitarian disaster that has swept across Somalia this year, after the country was hit by two consecutive failed rainy seasons.
An estimated 6.5 million people in the country are now facing “crisis” levels of hunger or worse, which is an increase of 1.7 million people since January. While Somalia has always been water-scarce, the current pattern of droughts hitting every two or three years is not like anything that has been experienced before.
“Drought has become a persistent pattern in Somalia over the past 30 years, eroding the resilience of communities and institutions,” explains Abdiaki Ainte, the director of climate and food security in the Somali Prime Minister’s Office. “In the past, drought was concentrated in certain regions. Today, it is spreading across much larger parts of the country, including areas that were not traditionally drought-prone.”
For 22-year-old Nurta Sidow Qasim, crisis-level hunger has resulted in the loss of her infant twins, a daughter called Khadija. After falling sick with malnutrition, Khadija was admitted to hospital, but treatment would prove insufficient: “The staff gave me tablets, syrup and rehydration salts,” Nurta says. “But before I could start the treatment, she passed away.”
Now Nurta fears for the life of her surviving twin, Mohamed, who remains weak, and who she has been feeding black tea and sometimes powdered milk as a result of food shortages. “The children are in very difficult conditions,” she says. “We are in urgent need of assistance. We need everything.”
Funding cuts from international aid partners, which meant that just 29 per cent of humanitarian funding requirements were met last year, have also contributed to the current crisis.
Aid from the UK is set to be cut further in the coming months after the government failed to name Somalia in its list of countries whose aid will be “protected” during its programme of cuts. The US has also been slashing funding for Somalia, with just $3 million (£2.3m) provided in humanitarian aid during the first three months of 2026, compared to $462m over the same period in 2025.
“Aid cuts are deeply concerning at a time when vulnerability remains high,” Ali Mohamed Omar, Somalia’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, tells The Independent. “The Somali government is strengthening national disaster response systems and expanding social protection. But the scale of climate shocks means continued international partnership remains essential.”
Middle East War turbocharging problems
Famine is thankfully set to be avoided for the time being in Somalia, government sources have confirmed, as a result of a healthy late Spring rains that have been forecast as well as the effective coordination of government authorities, NGOs and communities to prioritise the needs of those most in need.
But experts are now issuing dire warnings that the challenges that Somalia faces around receiving the foreign aid that so many millions depend on are set to be turbocharged by wars ongoing in Lebanon and Iran.
Some of these impacts are practical, with the World Food Programme telling The Independent that supply chain delays stemming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well as the closure of Oman’s Salalah Port have already significantly disrupted aid flows to Somalia, which is a country that depends on imports for 70 per cent of its food supply.
Although the Strait and the port have now reopened, experts are warning that it will take many months for regional trade, and prices, to recover.
Fuel costs in Somalia more than doubled within days of the war starting, while some staple cereals now cost up to 40 per cent more than they did last year. There have also been major delays to the delivery of key nutritional, medical, and sanitation consignments, and there are big concerns around Somalia’s 30 per cent dependence on fertiliser imports from the Gulf.
“Conflicts like this don’t stay contained,” Mercy Corps CEO Tjada D’Oyen McKenna has warned. “When fuel and fertiliser markets are disrupted, the ripple effects move quickly through food systems — and the people who feel it first are families in fragile countries who were already struggling to put food on the table.”
In Baidoa, where Nurta and Adan are, the price of rice has risen from $0.75/kg to $1/kg, according to data tracked by Mercy Corps.
With so many global crises now ongoing around the world, there are also big concerns that Somalia will now slip even further down the list of funding priorities for international partners, many of whom are already grappling with significant donor fatigue around Somalia’s long-standing humanitarian crisis.
According to one source spoken to by The Independent, senior figures in Arab states - many of whom have in recent years been very involved in the conflicts of the Horn of Africa - are now saying in private that crises will have be dealt with sequentially, with the needs of Iran and Lebanon now the top priority, followed by Palestine, then Sudan, with Somalia only coming after that.
“Global crises inevitably compete for attention, but Somalia’s strategic importance remains clear,” argues Ali Mohamed Omar, Somalia’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs. “Stability in Somalia contributes directly to maritime security, counter-terrorism efforts, and regional economic connectivity.”
Ironically, while its humanitarian needs may now be increasingly overlooked, Somalia has recently been receiving a huge amount of attention in other areas.
In December, Israel announced its official recognition of the breakaway state of Somaliland, which has for 30 years been operating independently as a self-declared republic. For Israel, the move represented a strategic boost to its footprint in the Red Sea region - but dozens of countries across the Arab League and African Union criticised the surprising move as potentially further compromising an already-unstable region.
“Somalia’s position is clear: Somaliland is part of the sovereign territory of the Federal Republic of Somalia,” says Minister Ali Mohamed Omar. “Any unilateral recognition would violate Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Then there is US President Donald Trump’s apparent obsession with Somalia and its diaspora, with his regular, racist statements mocking “Somalian bandits” that steal money, or questioning “the IQ” of the Somali people. The regular diatribes seem closely linked with his dislike of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the high-profile progressive Somali-American politician in Washington.
Development progress unravelling
For those that have worked on Somalia’s development for many years, there is immense frustration that long-term efforts to build Somalia’s capacity as a self-sustaining country are now at serious risk of being undone as a result of donors turning away from providing aid to the country.
Somalia’s big wins include financial reforms that have enabled the country’s external debt to fall from 64 per cent of GDP in 2018 to less than 6 per cent of GDP by the end of 2023. Legislation has been introduced to tackle corruption on both national and regional levels, while a new middle class is emerging in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
“Over the past decade we have rebuilt institutions, strengthened security cooperation, implemented economic reforms, and achieved historic debt relief,” says Minister Ali Mohamed Omar. “Somalia is at an important stage in its recovery: Sustained engagement now will help consolidate these gains and allow Somalia to move from crisis management toward long-term development.”
Olga Petryniak, senior director for resilience at Mercy Corps East Africa, is among those who are worried that all of this progress could now be undone.
“It’s really important for the world to realise that Somalia is not - for want of a better term - a basket case,” she says. “Somalia has a very ambitious national transformation plan and a very ambitious climate target which are both guiding it on a long-term pathway for sustainable development that will ultimately reduce aid dependency.
“At the same time, Somalia needs to be able to deal with these frequent humanitarian crises - so if a humanitarian safety net is no longer provided by donor countries, then there is a risk that Somalia is pushed back on its development plan and tremendous progress that has been made is undone.”
This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
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