By Mcloyd Chilangiza:
The World Food Programme (WFP) has scaled down its planned humanitarian assistance under the lean-season response plan by 33.3 percent, reducing the target caseload from 600,000 to 400,000 people due to funding constraints.
The reduction means that 200,000 people targeted under the organisation’s planned response for the 2026-27 lean season risk facing hunger from October this year to March next year.
This comes at a time the organisation faces a funding shortfall of $142.3 million (about K249.17 billion) for its operations during the period in focus.
In its October 2026 Country Brief, WFP says the funding constraints have also forced it to narrow the geographical coverage of the response from four districts to three, targeting Chikwawa, Nsanje and Phalombe only.
The shortfall threatens the continuity of several programmes, including emergency food assistance, nutrition support, school feeding and refugee assistance.
“Malawi faces a net funding shortfall of $142.3 million (K249.17 billion), which includes a $17 million (K29.77 billion) gap for the 2026-27 lean-season response (October 2026 to March 2027), threatening the continuity of critical life-saving assistance.
“As a result, many vulnerable households will remain without assistance at a time when food insecurity remains high, increasing the likelihood of families reducing the number of meals they eat each day and adopting other negative coping strategies,” the report reads.
Meanwhile, Centre for Agricultural Research and Development Director Innocent Pangapanga Phiri has said the reduction could worsen household food insecurity, increase reliance on negative coping strategies, weaken household resilience to climate-related shocks and deepen poverty.
“It is important to emphasise that this reduction in humanitarian assistance risks further entrenching the country’s vicious cycle of food insecurity and poverty.
“The government and stakeholders should strengthen food price monitoring and market stabilisation. Accordingly, stakeholders should monitor maize prices, improve market information, facilitate the movement of food from surplus to deficit areas, and address supply bottlenecks,” he said.
On his part, Centre for Humanitarian Assistance and Social Protection Executive Director Kenneth Sakala said the reduction would deepen food consumption gaps, leaving people to enter the peak hunger period of January to March without safety nets.
Sakala recommended that the government re-target and reallocate resources for affected households and roll out a shock-responsive expansion of the Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP) to mitigate worsening food insecurity.
“In the longer term, this is a warning that Malawi cannot continue to manage a recurrent lean-season crisis through annual humanitarian appeals. We need to link SCTP, anticipatory action, and investment in irrigation and resilience in the Shire Valley.
“The government needs to pre-position maize and cash before January price peaks, and fund last-mile transport that WFP currently provides as Logistics Cluster co-lead,” he said.
The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC), through the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, projected that 2.6 million people would face acute food insecurity during the 2026-27 lean season.
MVAC estimated that cushioning the affected population for three to four months would require 97,887 metric tonnes of maize, valued at K124.3 billion.