An estimated 28.8 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo face high levels of acute food insecurity between September and December 2026, according to an IPC assessment released on October 30. The estimate includes 3.6 million people in Emergency, the fourth level of the classification system.
The assessment projects a further deterioration in January to June 2027, when 30.3 million people could face Crisis-level hunger or worse. Within that total, 4.2 million are expected to face Emergency conditions. These are forecasts for the coming period, not counts of people already experiencing those future conditions.
The present estimate represents 23 per cent of the population analysed. Conditions are particularly severe in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, where 10.4 million people face Crisis or worse, including 3 million in Emergency. Deterioration in those provinces has offset modest improvements elsewhere in the country.
Conflict and disease complicate food access
The country analysis identifies conflict, displacement and the spread of Ebola alongside rising food and fuel prices as pressures on households. It also includes anticipated El Niño-related flooding and declining humanitarian assistance in its outlook. The flooding component is a forecast risk, rather than confirmation that every affected area has already flooded.
Djugu, Fizi, Shabunda and Walungu are classified in Emergency. IPC's recommendations call for protecting civilians and preventing further displacement, particularly in the conflict-affected east. They also seek safe humanitarian access to communities that are difficult to reach, including displaced people and households accommodating them.
The proposed response goes beyond distributing food. IPC recommends agricultural inputs and repairs to infrastructure to help livelihoods recover, stronger monitoring of prices, and wider access to social protection. Safe water, sanitation and healthcare are part of that response. Preparedness for climate shocks and surveillance of disease outbreaks also feature in the recommendations.
Food and transport
A separate World Food Programme update dated October 23 describes how the outbreak is disrupting access to food. Treatment and isolation can restrict a family's ability to obtain supplies, while insecurity and damaged or difficult roads obstruct deliveries. Food assistance is intended to help households follow health guidance without having to leave in search of something to eat.
At that update, WFP reported delivering more than 744,000 hot meals across 59 treatment and isolation facilities, alongside over 3,000 metric tonnes of food for patients' families. Those operational totals belong to the October 23 account. They are not a new national count of people reached after the October 30 assessment.
WFP said a treatment centre in Musienene had been handed over for operation and another was under construction in Bunia. Four additional centres, including one in Goma, were envisaged but were not yet operating. Its air service and logistics network also transport responders and relief supplies where overland access is constrained. The update records 1,255 humanitarian air-service flights since the response began, carrying 10,272 responders and 483 metric tonnes of cargo across the operation.
What the hunger classifications mean
The IPC's methodological explanation distinguishes assessment from direct measurement. Analysts bring together evidence from different sources and methods to classify the severity of a situation. The system does not itself collect all the underlying primary data, and its conclusions depend on the quality and availability of that evidence. IPC notes that access restrictions can leave information gaps in conflict areas. Its protocols allow analysis where minimum evidence exists, but the resulting assessment may be less specific or less accurate.
Emergency conditions require urgent action to protect lives and livelihoods. They should not be described interchangeably as Famine, which is a separate, fifth-level classification with additional requirements. Household-level Catastrophe and area-level Famine also have different meanings, even though both sit at the highest level of the scale.
The classifications help identify where assistance may be needed and how severe the pressures are. They do not establish that sufficient aid has arrived or that a response has succeeded. IPC says planning and implementation must separately account for practical constraints, including access, logistics and finance, while monitoring systems assess what assistance actually achieves.
Related reporting: Dalimss News has covered WMO's call for earlier El Niño preparation and the UN's October 9 warning on displacement in Yemen.
