US approves $32.5 million in assistance to Nigeria to help address hunger

The United States has approved $32.5 million in assistance to Nigeria to help address hunger, in a rare shift in U.S. foreign policy since President Donald Trump suspended most aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The funding will provide food assistance and nutritional support to internally displaced people in conflict-affected areas, the U.S mission to Nigeria said in a statement Wednesday.

Insecurity and funding cuts have put northern Nigeria in the grip of “an unprecedented hunger crisis” that could leave more than 1.3 million people without food and force the closure of 150 nutrition clinics in Borno state, Margot van der Velden, the World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in July.

In July, the WFP suspended food assistance across crisis-hit West and Central African countries as a result of U.S. and other global aid cuts that are grinding its operations to a halt.

Food stocks were projected to end around September