In accordance with a new study released this week, almost all of the worst-funded humanitarian crises will be located on the continent in 2024, making African nations once more at the top of the list of the world’s most underappreciated crises.
Released on Tuesday, the report by the nonprofit Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) lists Cameroon, Mozambique and a host of other African nations as some of the most burdened by violence and displacement, but also the most invisible to donors.
The United States, which was once the largest aid source in the world, has announced a significant reduction in development funding this year. Aid agencies received only half of what they needed in 2024, and experts say further shrinking aid will likely make 2025 even more bleak for people in need.
Prior to 2023, eight African emergencies were thought to be the most ignored.
What does the report say?
According to the NRC’s 2024 Most Neglected Crises report, “donor fatigue,” poor media coverage, and little to no political resolution are cited as contributing factors for the millions of people who have been displaced and face food insecurity or lack shelter.
The report defined countries in crisis as those that host or have more than 200, 000 displaced people, and which have been declared to be in severe crisis emergencies.
The NRC report identified Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burkinabe, Mali, Uganda, Iran, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honduras, and Somalia as the 34 nations that were the most “invisible.”
Aside from funding, there was little progress on effective conflict resolution, disaster prevention and diplomatic engagement in all the affected countries, the report added.
Overall, aid funding overall decreased in 2024, according to the NRC.
“The shortfall between what was required to meet humanitarian needs in 2024 and what was delivered was a staggering $25 billion, meaning over half of all needs went unmet”, the report stated.
Why are humanitarian emergencies in Africa ignored?
“Donor fatigue” and growing waves of nationalistic policies within traditional donor countries are causing the richest countries to reduce foreign aid funding, experts say. Attention is also impacted by a lack of proximity to emergencies, add analysts.
“Too many crises across the continent remain in the shadows – ignored because they don’t make headlines, or because they are not seen as of immediate strategic interest to international partners”, Christelle Hure, NRC’s head of advocacy in West and Central Africa, told Al Jazeera.
According to Hure, “Crises that knock on Europe’s door, as happened in 2015 with mass immigration, tend to receive the greatest media attention, while those who are far away remain not only out of sight but also out of mind,”
Which are the most neglected African emergencies?
Cameroon
In 2024, the West-Central African nation is at the top of the list of the world’s most underappreciated crises.
In the English-speaking northeast and northwest regions of Cameroon, a protracted civil war which began in 2017 is continuing. In the year that year, thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Francophone-majority government’s policies, including discrimination against the appointment of French-speaking judges.
Heavy crackdowns to suppress the protests soon saw armed groups springing up, declaring independence. Yaounde’s government then declared war. Both the rebels and government forces have targeted civilians. More than a thousand people have been internally displaced or have fled neighboring Nigeria, killing hundreds.
“The violence there is largely ignored because it’s not a direct threat to the central government”, Beverly Ochieng, a security analyst with United Kingdom-based intelligence firm Control Risks, told Al Jazeera, adding that little has been done to negotiate peace. Some secessionist leaders initially had the impression that Donald Trump was trying to support their cause, but they haven’t received much media attention.
Meanwhile, in the northern Lake Chad Basin region, also connected to Nigeria, violence by the armed group, Boko Haram, has continued for years, displacing thousands. Since Niger and Chad’s military governments left, leaving Cameroon, Nigeria, and Benin, a joint force of the countries in the Lake Chad Basin has largely fallen apart. Washington’s shrinking of security presence and operations in African nations is likely to further destabilise the arrangement.
Refugees from the Central African Republic and those from Boko Haram who are escaping conflict between two political parties are both based in Cameroon. Together, some 1.1 million people are internally displaced, and 500, 000 are refugees.
Despite this, the NRC reported on the displacement crisis in Cameroon in less than 30 000 articles in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic in 2024, compared to the Ukraine war, which was mentioned in 451, 000 articles. Only 45 percent, or $168m of the $371m required, was raised to fund aid in the various crises, according to the United Nations. President Paul Biya, 82, who has been in power since 1982, is frequently criticized for wasting most of his time in Switzerland. This is also the case for the government’s apparent indifference.
Ethiopia
The aftershocks of the Tigray war in the country’s north (2020-2022) merged with new intercommunal fighting in the Oromia and Amhara regions, creating a potent mix of crises which has seen 10 million people pushed out of their homes nationwide, the NRC report noted.
The federal army, which it claimed to represent the interests of the Amhara people, one of Ethiopia’s most important ethnic groups, is fighting the Fano armed group, which it both tried to disarm after they both engaged Tigrayan forces during the conflict. The Oromo Liberation Group, meanwhile, says it is seeking independence for the Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. The government in Addis Ababa, which has launched air strikes, has repressed both groups. Dozens of civilians have died in the fighting.
Additionally, food shortages have become worse due to drought and flooding. In the southern Gofa zone, heavy rains caused two landslides on July 21 that killed more than 200 people, the worst such landslides in the country.
Mozambique
This year’s list includes the southern African nation for the first time. Political upheaval following hotly contested October elections saw protesters who supported the independent opposition candidate, Venancio Mondlane, shot dead by Mozambican state security. According to local media reports, the violence left about 400 people dead.
Separately, ongoing attacks by an armed group with affiliations to ISIL (ISIS-Mozambique) in northern, oil-rich Cabo Delgado flared up in 2024. Since 2022, there has been violence there, with thousands of people being forced to flee, and a billion-dollar oil and gas project have been harmed. Government forces working with regional troops from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Rwandan soldiers were able to push the fighters back in 2023, allowing many displaced people to return. The conflict has quickly rekindled its volatile state because the fighters are so deeply ingrained in local communities.
Prone to cyclones due to its location in the Indian Ocean, Mozambique was hit by Cyclone Chido, which also devastated the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, in December. The northern part of Mozambique, which is in an armed conflict, was made landfall by the storm. Some 120 people were killed, and about 155, 000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Burkinabe and Mali
Since 2015, more than two million people have been displaced in Burkina Faso , because of the activities of violent armed groups like the Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which wants to create a caliphate. Despite efforts by the military-led government to retake control of the country with Russian support, some of those groups now control close to half of the nation.
The rebels have held civilians suspected of supporting government forces under siege for more than two years, blocking entries and exits to now nearly 40 towns and cities. However, armed groups and government forces are accused of attacking civilians allegedly assisting the fighters in villagers massacres.
Neighbouring Mali is ranked fourth on the neglected crises list and faces a similar situation. Ochieng, an analyst, attributes the West African Sahel’s three militarily-led nations, including Niger, in part to the leaders there’s hostile attitudes toward Western powers. All three have cut off Western allies which previously provided both military and humanitarian aid, particularly France. Aid has been hampered further by their hostility toward humanitarian organizations, some of whom are thought to be related to Western countries.
“These military leaders are focused on economic development and they don’t even want to be seen as not being able to provide for their people … that makes it very difficult for any donors to approach them to provide help, or even for aid agencies to assess what the actual needs are”, Ochieng said.
Other emergencies in Africa
- Uganda: Although the country itself does not face large-scale internal violence, Uganda is listed because it hosts the largest number of refugees in Africa – close to two million people from neighbouring South Sudan, Sudan and the DRC. The NRC warned that the NRC’s recommendation would cause local communities and refugees to become more tense.
- Democratic Republic of the Congo: Decades of violence by a slew of armed groups vying to control the country’s rich deposits of minerals, and more recently, offensives by the rebel M23 group, have seen hundreds of thousands displaced in eastern DRC between 2024 and early 2025. The disruption was caused by the same region’s 2023 Mpox outbreak. The African Union and the US are currently leading peace talks between the DRC government and neighbouring Rwanda, accused of backing M23. Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) deadly attacks are frequently unheard of.
- Somalia: Entrenched violence from the al-Shabab armed group, which has been active for decades, as well as drought, continues to displace people in the East African country. According to the NRC, it received “dangerously low” funding in 2024.
Will Trump’s aid cuts affect these crises even more?
US President Donald Trump’s sweeping aid cuts after he took office in January, and his decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency that distributes it, have prompted fears that humanitarian emergencies could worsen in 2025.
The US provides about $70 billion in foreign aid each year, especially for healthcare, as the largest donor in the world. In 2024, the most aid went to Ethiopia, Jordan, DRC, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria.
Aid workers worry that emergencies on the African continent could get worse as these funds are either cut off or completely stopped.
Other major donors are also making cuts, observers warn. The UK reduced its foreign aid by 0.2% in February, while the Netherlands will reduce its aid from 2027 to 2.4 billion euros ($2.72bn). France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden have all announced reductions to their aid budgets since.
The African Union (AU) must take the lead in the development of a continent-wide political solution, according to Hule of the NRC. The bloc’s Peace and Security Council, tasked with anticipating and mitigating conflict, has previously been criticised as being too slow to act.
Hule argued that the African Union and its member states are crucially in need of more funding, not just more money.
