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Food assistance needs expected to increase amid lean season in Angola
Key Messages
- Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes are expected through May 2025, specifically in Cunene, Cuando Cubango, and parts of Huíla, Namibe, and Moxico provinces. Households are facing food consumption deficits driven by reduced to limited access to own-produced crops and market foods amid below-average purchasing power. Many households are resorting to coping strategies such as reducing the number or size of meals; prioritizing childrens’ meals; withdrawing children from school; accessing wild foods and small animals; migrating in search of pasture for livestock; selling poultry and livestock; and selling firewood and charcoal.
- In the worst drought-affected south and east regions, Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes are likely to persist through May 2025 due to the combination of exhausted food stocks, increased reliance on coping strategies over an extended lean season, reduced assets from multiple droughts, and high food and non-food prices.
- In the remaining rural areas of Angola, at least one in five poor and very poor households are expected to be Stressed (IPC Phase 2) as general market prices remain high amid below-average income from agricultural labor, reducing purchasing power and forcing prioritization of food over non-food needs.
- FEWS NET estimates that 1.5 to 2 million people are likely to require humanitarian food aid at the peak of the lean season between January and March. The population in need is largely in southern and eastern Angola. Poor households have limited food stocks and started the lean season early following the poor 2024 harvest, compounded by high food prices.
Food security context
Angola has over a dozen different livelihood zones, with the central highlands among the most densely populated. The rainy season generally runs from October until May, with the lean season approximately November to February, and the main harvests peaking in April and May (Figure 1). The start of seasonal rains varies from early September in northeastern Angola to late November in the south (Figure 2). Cassava and maize production are widespread; Angola produces about three-quarters of the total maize needed for consumption in the country. Beans and potatoes are more common in the central highlands, plantains in the humid north, and drought-tolerant sorghum and millet in the dry south. Small household livestock are common throughout Angola, with cattle and goats forming a significant base of the agropastoral livelihood zones in the south.
Food insecurity is concentrated in rural areas, though most Angolans live in towns and cities. About two-thirds of Angola’s 37 million population live in urban areas due to prior displacement during decades of war followed by the urban concentration of economic activities driven by government spending of oil revenue. Poor households are largely located in rural areas, which represent a smaller share of the overall population.
Droughts have frequently occurred in southern Angola: prior severe droughts occurred in 2018/19 and 2020/21. The 2023/24 drought followed already poor agricultural harvests which negatively impacted household livelihoods. Southern and eastern Angola – particularly Cuando Cubango, Cunene, Huíla, and Moxico provinces – were significantly affected. As a result, livelihoods have been eroded by poor agricultural production, loss of livestock, lack of water for humans and livestock, declines in asset holdings, and displacement of people and animals. Livestock production has also been affected by the drought due to the lack of fodder and rangelands, as well as disease (such as foot-and-mouth outbreaks). Some Angolan pastoralists in the south migrate into neighboring Namibia seeking grazing land for their livestock, although poor rainfall outcomes in Namibia limit this coping strategy.
Angola continues to have relatively high rates of maternal and child mortality from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition. Acute food insecurity as well as inadequate care and feeding practices contribute to acute malnutrition in drought-affected areas, compounded by limited access to safe drinking water and low infectious disease-vaccination coverage.