More people in Sierra Leone are going hungry today than in 2018 due to the impact of the increasing food prices. While Covid-19 has worsened access to food, the downward trend began before the pandemic and peaked in 2019.

According to the World Food Program’s latest Food Security Monitoring System Report which monitors food security and vulnerability across Sierra Leone, a third of households are begging, selling off land and livestock just to put food on the table.

The report reveals that in 2018, only 11 percent of households used emergency coping strategies where they sold land, last female breeding stock, begged or ate their seed stocks, but today 31 percent of households are coping with extreme food insecurity.

The proportion of households with “poor” Food Consumption doublets between September 2018 and August 2021. The people who are vulnerable to fall into the poor food consumption category increased from 37 percent in June 2020 to 42 percent in August 2021.

Households in Kenema, Tonkolili, Port Loko, and Falaba spends the most of their income on food, and are more likely to be living in a state of food insecurity.