From farmers in the Himalayas watching glaciers and rivers dry up to agriculturists facing severe drought in Sub-Saharan Africa, those who rely on predictable seasons are paying the heaviest price for a crisis they did not create. When extreme weather destroys harvests, it triggers a domino effect across the entire economy. Reduced crop yields force nations to spend scarce foreign reserves on expensive food imports. At the household level, skyrocketing market prices shrink family budgets, forcing households to swap fresh, nutritious produce for cheap, calorie-dense staples.
Low-income and developing nations bear the brunt of these disruptions. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 20% of the population faces chronic hunger and projections warn that by 2030, nearly 60% of the world’s undernourished people will live in Africa.
Every year on 16 October, through the celebration of World Food Day, the FAO reminds us that food security is a fundamental human right. Protecting it demands policy accountability along every link of the chain that includes reforming the global financial architecture, boosting climate adaptation funding and building resilient local food systems.
The policy bottleneck: why finance matters
Turning these priorities into action is difficult when at-risk nations are already struggling to meet their financial obligations. Trapped in a cycle of debt servicing, climate-vulnerable nations currently spend nearly 25 times more on debt repayments than on climate action. This fiscal drain leaves governments with virtually no room to invest in the vital infrastructure —such as cold storage, solar irrigation and farmer safety nets—needed to prevent a bad harvest from turning into a full-blown hunger crisis.
Targeted finance shows what is possible when these resources are made available. In Northern Ghana, the EU and Germany-funded REACH initiative helped nearly 200 communities build climate-resilient food systems. However, because local public coffers are drained by debt, these essential protections currently rely entirely on external funding.
This reality highlights the important role the European Union can play, alongside African nations and other international partners, in reducing the risk of climate-induced food insecurity. As a global leader in climate and development finance, the EU’s choices, specifically whether it offers grants that help countries adapt to climate change or loans that add to countries’ debts, will decide whether vulnerable communities build resilience before the next climate shock or are left picking up the pieces after it.
Asking the harder questions
For our generation, the challenge is to look past the stories about droughts and failed harvests and ask: who benefits from the way our food systems work?
As the REACH programme shows, grants can help communities protect their harvests, but they cannot change who profits from the food Africa grows. That is a question about an older relationship going back to colonial times, when African farmland has been set up to supply Europe. As raw crops went out, the processing and profit stayed in Europe. To this day, much of that arrangement stayed in place.
Cocoa shows how unfair it is. West Africa grows most of the world’s cocoa, yet farmers in Ghana get only about six cents of every dollar spent on chocolate. Most of the high-value-added work happens outside of Africa. So funding resilience is only half the job, we also need to change the extractive relationship between wealthy economies and Africa, which supplies the raw materials while others keep the profit.
What the EU can do
This question is being tested right now in the EU’s next seven-year budget, the MFF. The Irish Council Presidency’s proposal, unveiled on 10 October, cuts the external action heading, which includes development aid, by €38 billion. Leaders aim to reach a final deal by the end of 2026. Once the budget is agreed, it fixes spending until 2034.
This World Food Day, here’s what EU leaders must deliver:
- Safeguard a strong Global Europe in the MFF negotiations.
- Ensure aid for food security and climate adaptation reaches vulnerable populations, especially in Africa.
- Deliver support as grants, not loans, so countries already trapped in debt can build resilience before the next shock.
