When El Niño Meets Fragility and Conflict: Can Emergency Seed Aid Build Resilience?

Nov 2, 2026 | Guush Berhane, Claudia Ringler, and Rewa Misra
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Fragile and conflict-affected (FCA) countries face overlapping crises: climate volatility, violence and displacement, food insecurity, and weak institutions. The current “super” El Niño—so far the strongest on record—is now compounding these problems. Intensifying droughts, heavy rains, and other weather impacts associated with the atmospheric phenomenon are already affecting farm production that hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on for food and nutrition. Farming households in the FCA areas of sub-Saharan Africa affected by the El Niño shock face critical decisions of whether, when, and what to plant, particularly if seed and other inputs are difficult to obtain or unaffordable.