On Monday, April 20, 2026, a high-level meeting in Bamako between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) underscored the intensifying food security pressures facing Mali.
AfDB representative Cédric Achille Mbeng Mezui and FAO acting representative Dominique Koffy Kouacou reviewed a landscape of worrying indicators, including forecasts that over 1.12 million children and 91,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women could face acute malnutrition during the 2025–2026 period. The situation is particularly critical in the north and center of the country, with the Ménaka region currently at risk of deteriorating into a full-scale food emergency as households struggle to maintain regular access to basic nutrition.
A primary driver of this instability is the skyrocketing cost of agricultural inputs, which has severely hampered production prospects. International fertilizer prices have seen a dramatic surge, with urea prices alone jumping roughly 46% between February and March 2026. For a nation heavily dependent on these imports, such volatility directly inflates production costs and threatens the yields of local farmers who are already grappling with the twin shocks of climate change and regional insecurity. These financial barriers complicate the preparation for upcoming planting seasons, making it increasingly difficult for producers to sustain the output necessary to feed the population.
To address these structural vulnerabilities, the FAO and AfDB are seeking to align their efforts through the development of “agropoles.” These projects are designed to organize value chains and enhance local processing, transforming agriculture from a subsistence activity into a structured economic pillar. By combining the AfDB’s financial backing with the FAO’s technical resilience programs, the two institutions hope to create a more integrated support system for Malian producers. For the national authorities, the immediate priority remains balancing emergency relief with these long-term investments to ensure the agricultural sector can eventually provide the stability needed to weather global market volatility.
MD/Sf/lb/abj/APA