Sudanese officials said on Friday that residents of some areas of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan were forced to eat leaves and locusts due to hunger and lack of food.
Kavirad Koko Teyeh, representative of the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in the Nuba Mountains region, said the areas most affected by food shortages were the provinces of Lagawa and Acacia, where locusts destroyed crops last year.
The official added that the problem in the aforementioned districts is worsening due to the war and famine in Sudan, which affected them, noting that in 2023, locusts destroyed many farms in the two provinces and people did not harvest enough crops, causing food shortages.
Koko Tieh called on humanitarian agencies to rescue vulnerable populations in Lagawa province, warning that “if there is no help from humanitarian organizations, we don’t know what will happen to the large number of 9,000 displaced people that is growing daily.”
“The rise in consumer prices has affected citizens and displaced people in the Kacha, Sabre and Abujirad region,” Koko Teh said.
Griff Adam Greif, a local government official, said on Tuesday that commodity prices have risen in local markets, with 3.7 kg of sorghum reaching thousands of Sudanese pounds.
On Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that Sudan could experience an “unprecedented” famine as the “lean” season begins in a few weeks.
This came in an official statement by the program, in which it announced the arrival of the first food aid shipment in months to the Darfur region in western Sudan.
However, the UN Food Agency warns that unless the people of Sudan receive a steady flow of aid across all possible humanitarian corridors, from neighbouring countries and across the battle lines, the country’s hunger catastrophe will worsen.
In its statement, the World Food Program pointed out that two convoys crossed the border from Chad to Darfur, in late March, carrying food aid for about 250,000 people facing acute hunger in North, West and Central Darfur, pointing out that these are the first convoys of WFP cross-border assistance to reach Darfur, after lengthy negotiations to reopen these roads, after the authorities in Port Sudan canceled the permits for humanitarian corridors from Chad, last February.
