In its daily flash of December 16, the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operation (Echo in English) reports that the government of Cameroon announced on December 12 a worrying situation of food insecurity in the country.
Echo, which cites the Harmonized Framework, reports that more than 3 million people are currently experiencing food insecurity between October and December 2024, “while it is expected that 2.7 million people will experience food insecurity between June and August 2025 during the lean season.” The lean season is the period between two harvests during which populations have exhausted the stocks harvested during the previous harvests and have not yet harvested the next ones.
According to Echo, these figures show an increase of 4.7% compared to the same period in 2023 and 9.6% in the projected phase. The three regions affected by a security crisis, namely the Far North, the North West and the South West, are home to most of the people experiencing food insecurity, Echo points out.
This service adds that the Far North region alone has more than a million people who are expected to be experiencing food insecurity between June and August 2025. “The unprecedented floods of 2024 in this region, the increase in conflict-induced violence and the rise in food prices are factors contributing to this insecurity,” Echo analyses.