Millions of children across four African countries could die of malnutrition in the next three months, Save the Children has warned, as emergency food supplies dwindle as a result of international aid cuts.
Save the Children said on Thursday that Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan were expected to run out of so-called “ready-to-use therapeutic food” (RUTF), a nutritional paste that has a long shelf life and does not need refrigeration.
In Nigeria alone, the lives of 3.5 million children under age five who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition will be under threat without access to treatment and nutrition support, the humanitarian group said.
“Imagine being a parent with a severely malnourished child,” Yvonne Arunga, Save the Children’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement.
“Now imagine that the only thing that could help your child bounce back from the brink of death is therapeutic food and that food is out of stock when it was once available.”
The warning comes just months after the United Nations announced sweeping programme cuts in June amid what the UN’s humanitarian office described as “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.
“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said at the time.
“The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”
Key international donors, led notably by the United States, have drastically scaled back foreign aid funding, leading to widespread concern that critical aid – from food and healthcare to poverty reduction – will be affected in countries around the world.
In July, as part of US President Donald Trump’s push to scale back federal spending, Congress approved a package that slashed the country’s foreign aid expenditures by about $8bn.
Last month, Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) reported that at least 652 malnourished children had died at its facilities in northern Nigeria in the first half of 2025 due to a lack of timely care.
“We are currently witnessing massive budget cuts, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, which are having a real impact on the treatment of malnourished children,” said Ahmed Aldikhari, MSF’s country representative in Nigeria.
On Thursday, Save the Children said staff at one of its clinics in northwestern Kenya have been forced to try to get food from other facilities to help feed malnourished children.
“And if [the children] are not supported, I know very soon [we] will be losing them,” said Sister Winnie, who runs the facility in Turkana.
About 105,000 RUTF cartons are needed through the end of the year across Kenya, Save the Children said, but only about 79,000 have been secured so far, with stocks expected to run out in October.
The group said that overall, shortfalls in nutrition funding could cut off treatment to 15.6 million people in 18 countries around the world, including more than 2.3 million severely malnourished children this year.
The situation is expected to deteriorate further in 2026, it added.
Comments