Farmers across Sudan are watching crops fail as drought and record heat deepen the devastation caused by a civil war that has already driven millions toward hunger, fueling fears that famine will spread.
El Niño, the climate pattern associated with extreme weather across parts of Africa, has brought punishing temperatures and severe dryness to Sudan. The country has already seen pockets of famine during more than three years of conflict.
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Rain-fed agriculture provides much of Sudan’s food, but fields are drying up, livestock are losing condition and farmers are struggling to rescue what remains of their crops.
Camels at a livestock market in El Obeid appear weak due to a shortage of pasture as drought and heat linked to El Nino threaten harvests, livestock, and water supplies in Sudan’s war-affected Kordofan region, El Obeid, Sudan, Sept. 12, 2026. (Reuters Photo)
National rainfall from July through September — Sudan’s main rainy season — was the lowest in more than 30 years, according to U.S. Geological Survey data.
North Darfur posted its lowest rainfall since 1984, the year a catastrophic famine struck Sudan and Ethiopia. North Kordofan had its driest season since 1990, while southeastern Gedaref state recorded its lowest rainfall since 1991.
“The risk of famine is growing in many conflict-affected areas of Sudan, with the impact of El Nino-induced drought compounding already dire conditions,” the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in an Oct. 12 alert.
The IPC estimated in June that 5.1 million people were experiencing severe hunger. That figure is being revised, but drought threatens to erase anticipated gains just as the harvest season gets underway.
The World Food Program expects the drought to push another 350,000 people into severe hunger by the end of 2026, with the number rising to 1.2 million by August 2027, Samuel Clendon, the agency’s head of program for Sudan, told Reuters in October. Darfur and Kordofan are expected to bear the heaviest burden.
Crops wither as livestock lose value
Near Um Ruwaba in North Kordofan, Mariam Omar bends over her smallholding, pulling weeds from fields where crops that should be approaching harvest have shriveled in dry, sandy soil.
“This year is terrible,” she said.
Mohamed Abdelrahman, who manages about 420 hectares and provides financing to smallholders through his sesame trading business, said roughly 40% of farmland around Um Ruwaba would yield nothing. Many farmers displaced by the war are returning to land now battered by drought, he said.
Livestock markets are suffering as well. In El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, cows stand with ribs visible beneath dusty hides.
Cows at a livestock market in El Obeid appear weak due to a shortage of pasture as drought and heat linked to El Nino threaten harvests, livestock, and water supplies in Sudan’s war-affected Kordofan region, El Obeid, Sudan, Sept. 12, 2026. (Reuters Photo)
“Usually at this time the cattle are fat and everyone is making a profit. But now, with this autumn’s scarcity, the cattle became skinny,” trader Sirajaldeen Abdellateef said.
Farmers are also absorbing the impact of a rapidly weakening currency and accelerating inflation, which have pushed up the cost of food and other necessities.
The WFP has made 5 million people its priority but acknowledges that it cannot reach everyone who needs help. Even those receiving assistance have seen their food rations reduced as the agency tries to conserve dwindling supplies.
As of Oct. 17, the WFP had $276 million available for its Sudan operation, less than half of last year’s budget. It says an additional $134 million is needed to respond to drought-driven hunger.
The simultaneous fall in food aid and agricultural output is a “recipe for disaster,” the WFP’s acting executive director, Carl Skau, told Reuters after visiting Darfur.
More families to flee
In Tawila, a sprawling displacement camp in Darfur housing about 700,000 people, food rations have been cut in half while thousands continue to arrive, Skau said. Aid workers reported that 9,000 people entered the camp between early September and mid-October.
Suad Ahmed, a teacher displaced several times during the war, left her village east of al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, and traveled to Tawila in search of food.
“As I was coming here on the road, so many people said: ‘If you find food and drink there, please tell us,’” she said.
Adam Rojal, spokesman for Sudan’s General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugee Camps, said hunger was becoming a growing reason for people to abandon their homes.
“It’s no longer just about bullets,” he said.
Drought has also reached Gedaref, a southeastern state largely spared from the fighting that has become a key source of food during the war.
Emad Kabsoor, whose farms cover 14,700 hectares, said extreme heat and a lack of rain had devastated his land.
“Even if we get rain going forward, I’ll only have about 25% of last year’s crop,” he said. “We’ve never had a season like this.”
A farmer in a village near the city of Um Ruwaba clears land as drought and heat linked to El Nino threaten harvests, livestock, and water supplies in the war-affected Kordofan region, in North Kordofan, Sudan, Sept. 12, 2026. (Reuters Photo)
Temperatures in Gedaref on Oct. 20 were 7 to 9 degrees Celsius above the historical average, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor.
Sudan’s government has sought to play down the danger. Agriculture Minister Esmat Qureshi said on Oct. 8 that this year’s harvest would be smaller, but “not significantly less than last year’s.”
War compounds crisis
The drought is intensifying a crisis in which fighting between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has destroyed communities, interrupted farming and forced millions from their homes.
Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly accused both sides of obstructing or delaying aid deliveries. Both parties deny the allegations.
Abdelrahman Ismail, head of the RSF’s humanitarian aid authority, told Reuters that the group had attempted to organize an early response and could do more if it had adequate resources.
The IPC declared pockets of famine in Sudan in 2024 and 2025, including al-Fashir. Government forces and allied fighters, together with as many as 250,000 civilians, endured an RSF siege around the city for about 18 months before it fell.
Alex de Waal, an expert on famine, said Sudan’s crisis was in many ways more severe than the famine that ravaged the region in 1984 and killed hundreds of thousands. The international community provided substantial assistance at that time, while humanitarian budgets are now being reduced.
“The situation today is in most respects much, much worse because of the conflict,” de Waal said.
Sirajaldin al-Tahir, a farmer in Um Ruwaba, remembers the 1984 famine, when failed crops and dying animals drove people from their homes. He said U.S. food aid helped his village survive.
“But God took pity on us, and the US government brought in aid and distributed it to our village,” he said.
More than 40 years later, failed rains and collapsing harvests are once again placing Sudan’s food supply at risk. This time, war and shrinking aid budgets are leaving millions even more exposed.
“This year, 2026, we don’t know how it will end,” al-Tahir said.
