The United States has approved $32.5 million for Nigeria to address hunger months after US President Donald Trump suspended most aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID.
The recent funding will provide food assistance and nutritional support to internally displaced people, IDPS, in conflict-affected areas, the U.S mission to Nigeria said in a statement on Wednesday, September 3.
According to the Mission, the donation will benefit more than 764,000 people across Nigeria’s northeast and northwest, including “complementary nutrition top-ups for 41,569 pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls and 43,235 children through electronic food vouchers.”
Nigeria is grappling with an escalating humanitarian crisis.
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.
Also 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.