Africa Humanitarian Overview - Mid-Year Update - As of June 2025

Key Highlights

• As of April 2025, approximately 300 million people worldwide require humanitarian assistance, with Africa accounting for nearly 45 per cent of this global caseload — around 134 million people.

• Africa remains overrepresented in global aid appeals, yet funding gaps have been leaving millions in crisis for decades.

• Millions of lives are hanging in the balance as services, programmes and organizations are forced to hyper-prioritize or shut down due to lack of funding. By May 2025, 47.7 million people on the continent had been reprioritized for lifesaving assistance.

• 120 million people across 26 African countries face crisis-level (IPC Phase 3) or worse acute food insecurity.

• Conflict remains the main driver of humanitarian needs in Africa. People displaced by violence in Africa tripled – from about 11 million in 2015 to 34 million in 2024.

• Major disease outbreaks are surging across the continent, including cholera, measles, malaria and Mpox. Conflict, climate disasters and limited access to healthcare are worsening spread of diseases.

• Humanitarian access is increasingly restricted in 2025 due to conflict, climate shocks and limited funding.

• The safety and security of aid workers is an increasing concern. In the first five months of 2025, 128 aid workers were killed across 17 countries, with South Sudan (17 incidents) and Sudan (16 incidents) being among the most dangerous places for aid workers.

• Between 2000 and 2024 about 4,130 aid workers were harmed (killed, injured or kidnapped). Of these 89 per cent were national staff. In early 2025, 99 per cent of those harmed were local or national staff, attacked in the line of duty serving their own people.

• A shared commitment to humanitarian action must be scaled up: to save lives, ease suffering and restore dignity — guided by humanitarian principles, tackle root causes and build lasting resilience. The time to act in solidarity is now!