Deepening fuel crisis disrupting aid in southern and eastern Africa
By Tapiwa Gomo, OCHA’s Head of Communication and Information Unit, Regional Office for Southern and Eastern Africa
When UN relief chief Tom Fletcher visited Malakal, South Sudan, in mid‑February this year, communities asked him a question that cut to the core: “Is help coming?” At the time, assistance was already stalled by brutal funding cuts; well before the fuel crisis intensified its impact.
The global humanitarian system is under unprecedented strain, as conflicts intensify, climate shocks grow more frequent and severe, and economic pressures deepen in fragile contexts.
Just as life‑saving assistance needs to scale up, a new threat is tightening its grip: the fuel crisis. Disruptions linked to instability around the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Middle East crisis have driven sharp energy price increases across Africa and beyond. In some places, fuel is still available, but increasingly unaffordable. In humanitarian terms, that is a shortage.
Rising fuel prices are rapidly emerging as a direct threat to humanitarian response. Their impact is already evident: operational reach is shrinking, deliveries are delayed, and food and health crises are worsening - not because assistance is unavailable, but because it has become too expensive to move.
Fuel is no longer just one of many operational expenses; its availability and affordability now determine whether aid can reach people at all.
Fuel underpins every aspect of humanitarian work, powering food deliveries, hospital generators, vaccine cold chains, and aircraft that connect communities cut off by conflict or floods. As prices rise, humanitarian organizations are reducing field movements, grounding vehicles, delaying distributions, and scaling back operations. These are not minor adjustments but fundamental constraints on access. When transport stops, assistance stops - and the most vulnerable are left behind.
Fuel price spikes of up to 150 per cent in some markets are cutting people off from essential services such as water and healthcare, while simultaneously disrupting agricultural production in some hunger hotspots in Africa.
Somalia
Country‑level impacts reveal how quickly fuel shocks translate into humanitarian consequences. In Somalia, the crisis is defined not by fuel availability, but by affordability. Fuel remains in the market, yet prices have risen rapidly, doubling in recent weeks, slowing operations and shrinking reach.
For Nuuney, a mother displaced by severe drought, this means waiting longer for help. Now living in Baidoa, the capital of South West State, Nuuney arrived two months ago after exhausting every survival option. “There was no food, no water. Hunger was overwhelming our family. We had nothing left to survive on,” she said. Despite reaching Baidoa, finding enough food remains a daily struggle.
Speaking from Somalia at the Faynus Nutrition and Health Center in Mogadishu, where malnourished children from dozens of displacement sites have been receiving lifesaving treatment this April, Fletcher said he had witnessed “the impact of fuel and food shortages, and price rises due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.” He added: “To the women and girls I am talking to here, these are issues of life and death.”
At least 59 per cent of our humanitarian partners in Somalia have reported being affected by fuel shortages, increasing costs of aid supplies including food, nutrition and medicines, freight expenses and delay of shipments. Despite that, humanitarian partners in Somalia continue to deliver but needs outpace available resources. Transport has slowed, humanitarian flights are restricted to only the most critical cargo, and fuel‑dependent systems - from water trucking to cold chains, are under mounting pressure. What begins as a budgetary constraint quickly becomes a public health risk, with delayed vaccinations, disrupted nutrition programmes, and rising vulnerability among communities already living on the edge.
Sudan
In Sudan, the stakes are even higher. As global fuel and fertilizer prices rise, the country is paying a heavy price for its dependence on imports, compounding what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Fuel price increases of up to 40 per cent are driving system‑wide cost escalation in a fragile, conflict‑affected environment, sharply increasing the cost of producing and transporting food, keeping hospitals operational, and maintaining water systems, just as humanitarian needs continue to surge.
Famine conditions have been confirmed in multiple locations, and children are facing life‑threatening malnutrition, particularly in areas cut off from aid.
“Food is very hard to get. Sometimes I don’t eat,” said eleven‑year‑old Atef.
Aid agencies warn that critical air routes and waterways into Sudan are increasingly disrupted, while transport and insurance costs continue to rise. Some shipments are being rerouted, adding weeks to delivery timelines and increasing expenses. The risk is no longer limited to delays, but now includes pipeline breaks and stock‑outs, leaving food, medicines, and other essential supplies stranded and reducing the amount of life‑saving assistance that reaches children like Atef when they need it most.
South Sudan
South Sudan illustrates how global energy shocks can rapidly deepen a humanitarian crisis. Despite being an oil‑producing country, its reliance on imported refined fuel leaves operations highly exposed to price volatility.
Electricity rationing in Juba is disrupting health services, vaccine cold chains, and humanitarian hubs, while higher fuel costs are restricting access to flood‑ and conflict‑affected areas. As agencies limit movements to the most essential, the risk of delayed assistance and preventable loss of life is increasing amid cholera outbreaks and severe food insecurity affecting more than ten million people.
Since March 2026, fuel prices have doubled, driving up transport costs, constraining traders’ ability to restock, and pushing up food and essential commodity prices. These pressures are eroding families purchasing power and increasing the need to adjust cash and voucher assistance in a country where nearly 10 million people need aid. Operationally, truck shortages along the Juba corridor are lengthening delivery timelines and making aid less predictable, while rising fuel costs are also putting pressure on humanitarian air operations, threatening their long‑term viability if prices continue to climb.
Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, the crisis has become operationally crippling. Reports of partners suspending humanitarian operations and grounding fleets are widespread across the country, affecting programme delivery and response capacity, and compounding existing constraints within an already hyper-prioritized response. While humanitarian operations have been formally designated as a priority sector by the Government, fuel supply remains severely constrained and costs are escalating, triggering rationing and priority allocation measures.
Humanitarian partners are making difficult choices and exercising collective discipline to manage limited fuel - strictly prioritizing life-saving activities, postponing non-essential travel, consolidating missions, and sharing vehicles. Perhaps the most difficult choice of all is deciding who to reach now, and who must wait.
Hunger warning
By April, fuel prices in southern and eastern Africa ranked among the continent’s highest, with Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia among the hardest hit. Humanitarian agencies warn that millions more people are at risk of hunger, not because food is unavailable, but because it can no longer be moved affordably. Already, the World Food Programme estimates that nearly two‑thirds of the additional 45 million people projected to fall into hunger globally due to Middle East–related economic shocks live in Africa.
The humanitarian system is already at its limits, and energy shocks now threaten to push it beyond breaking point. Ill‑suited to absorb sustained fuel volatility, the system’s ability to adapt is further constrained by deep funding cuts and the growing shift of donor resources toward defence and security.
Most grants and appeals were designed before the current fuel crisis, based on cost assumptions that no longer hold. With global humanitarian financing shrinking and appeals already reduced to only the most urgent life‑saving needs, agencies are being forced into stark trade‑offs: cutting programmes, renegotiating budgets mid‑implementation, or scaling back operations altogether. As a result, aid organizations are struggling to reach the most vulnerable with less assistance, at far higher cost, through supply chains that are slower, weaker, and increasingly unsustainable.
The result is a slow erosion of response capacity at precisely the moment when humanitarian needs are rising fastest. If current trends persist, the implications are stark: reduced humanitarian reach, deepening food insecurity, heightened public health risks, more frequent pipeline breaks, and worsening economic instability. “Through this year, fewer people will get assistance because of the [fuel] cost increase,” Jan Egeland, the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the media in Oslo.
For humanitarian action to remain effective, this reality must be confronted directly. Without greater financing flexibility, stronger logistics coordination, and measures to absorb fuel‑cost shocks, the humanitarian system will continue to slow. When it does, the greatest cost will be borne not by institutions or budgets, but by the millions of people whose lives depend on aid arriving on time.