Country: Angola Source: Famine Early Warning System Network Please refer to the attached file. Key Messages From June to October 2026, outcomes aligned with Stressed (IPC Phase 2) are expected in southern…
What the source says
Country: Angola
Source: Famine Early Warning System Network
Please refer to the attached file.
Key Messages
From June to October 2026, outcomes aligned with Stressed (IPC Phase 2) are expected in southern agropastoral zones and much of the coast. The March-June national cereal harvest was below average, and rural households will likely deplete their food stocks and become market reliant up to four months early. Poor households will have minimally adequate food consumption due to market purchases of maize meal using intensified self-employment, income from informal labor, and livestock sales in agropastoral areas, but they will reduce non-food expenditures.
From November 2026 to January 2027, Crisis (IPC Phase 3)-aligned outcomes are expected across agropastoral areas. During the November-February lean season, falling livestock-to-maize terms of trade, elevated prices, and declining milk availability will result in food consumption deficits. Poor households will likely increase livestock sales and engage in a variety of self-employment activities to increase income for market food purchases. Isolated pockets of poor agropastoral households with no livestock (and therefore no milk) and limited income-earning opportunities will face outcomes aligned with Emergency (IPC Phase 4) as the lean season peak in January.
The population in need is expected to increase progressively throughout the projection period, reaching 1.0–1.49 million people between November 2026 and January 2027, with needs likely peaking as the annual lean season peaks in early 2027. The areas of the highest concern are in southern agropastoral areas where food insecurity will likely intensify seasonally as households have increasingly fewer livestock to sell, less milk to consume, and fewer agricultural labor opportunities from November to January.
The analysis in this report is based on information available as of June 30, 2026.
Food security context
Angola experienced a wave of urbanization and population growth following the conclusion of the 1975 to 2002 civil war, when many internally displaced persons (IDPs) and rural households moved to urban areas and the coast. According to the 2024 census, the population of Angola totaled over 36 million people, with an exceptionally high urban concentration of roughly two-thirds of the population, including a third concentrated in and around the capital city of Luanda. Urban households participate in diverse livelihood activities, supported by government efforts to diversify the economy away from crude oil and diamond exports by expanding investment in mining, agriculture, tourism, and logistics. However, as the government is involved in the multi-step gradual removal of domestic fuel subsidies since 2024, dropping fuel subsidies led to a spike in transportation inflation in July 2024, transferring to higher food prices for the urban poor. Inflation has eased since, but food prices continue to more gradually rise.
Rural livelihoods in Angola are dominated by rainfed, smallholder agriculture, which varies by regional agroclimatology patterns and geography. Rainfall is unimodal countrywide: the rainy season typically begins as early as October and ends as late as May, except in northern areas where it ends in June. The northern, northeastern, and central areas receive the most rainfall, and households in these areas produce cassava, some cash crops (e.g., banana and pineapple), and engage in livestock production and riverine fishing. These areas have an overall lower risk of acute food insecurity, though they also host a small number of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The central and center-south (including the central plateau) receive relatively less rain, but nonetheless produce surpluses of maize, small grains, and cassava that flow to other areas of the country, especially urban areas and the coast. Households also raise livestock in these areas. The coastal plains are located to the west of the central highlands and are drier than the highlands. In areas closer to cities, market gardening is an important source of income, and fishing-based livelihoods are common on the coast. Some areas have access to irrigated production, supporting large-scale, commercial agriculture. The southern, southwestern, and southeastern parts of the country are semi-arid. Agropastoral livelihoods predominate in these areas, with better-off households raising cattle for sale while poor households often provide pastoral labor for in-kind payments of milk. Middle and poor households also raise smaller livestock, including sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry. Most households also produce millet and sorghum for their own consumption, as well as maize in areas bordering the central highlands. Poor households in southern, urban, and coastal Angola typically buy maize meal as a staple for much of the year while cassava is the predominant staple in much of northern Angola. Better-off and some urban households often buy imported rice and wheat products. While Angola produces staple foods in significant quantities, Angola is a net importer, importing significant quantities of maize, rice, and wheat every year, making pricing of these grains in regional and international markets a key monitoring indicator.
The main drivers of acute food insecurity in Angola include macroeconomic conditions (such as inflation, currency depreciation, and the prices of food and fuel imports), weather shocks, and the interaction of these factors. Recurring El Niño-driven droughts in 2015/16, 2019/20, and 2023/24 severely impacted agropastoral livelihoods in southern Angola and sometimes lowland agricultural livelihoods in eastern Angola, resulting in reduced crop yields and smaller livestock holdings that households have yet to fully rebuild (many herds remain up to 40 percent below 2021 levels, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry [MINAGRIF]). In southern, southwestern, and southeastern pastoral areas, the impacts of insufficient rainfall include reduced crop yields and increased time and effort seeking water and pasture as water points dry up and rangeland conditions deteriorate. Eastern, coastal areas, and the southern central highlands are also at risk of poor crop production during a drought. Conversely, riverine areas are at risk of flooding following heavy rainfall upstream or locally.
Rural households cope with constrained crop and livestock production primarily by intensifying their use of self-employment. They produce bricks, gather wild foods, construction materials, and firewood, and burn charcoal to supplement agricultural and non-agricultural labor income, although returns from these items and activities typically decline in a dry year or following a flood as more people attempt to cope by turning to these activities. In urban areas, high food prices are a key driver of acute food insecurity. In some cases, when there have been production shortfalls in the other parts of the country, urban poor workers encounter increased competition for various forms of labor and trade with the rural poor who arrive in urban areas looking for work.
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