When El Niño meets fragility and conflict: Can emergency seed aid build resilience?
IFPRI is launching new research on seed systems in conflict zones. The project in northern Ethiopia and northern Nigeria examines how climate shocks, conflict, and displacement affect seed access and local seed systems
By Guush Berhane, Claudia Ringler, and Rewa MisraNovember 2, 2026
Key takeaways
- IFPRI is launching new research on seed systems in conflict zones. The project in northern Ethiopia and northern Nigeria examines how climate shocks, conflict, and displacement affect seed access and local seed systems.
- El Niño and conflict are creating a severe agricultural crisis. Drought, flooding, displacement, and violence are disrupting farming and worsening food insecurity across fragile regions of sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia and Nigeria.
- Seed access is often the biggest challenge, not seed supply. Evidence suggests farmers are more likely to face affordability problems after shocks than outright seed shortages, highlighting the importance of designing aid to match local conditions.
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.
Amid these complex crises, emergency seed aid is essential. By getting suitable seeds to farmers ahead of a shock or replacing seed that a shock has destroyed, seed aid can help farmers continue production and build resilience to sustain their operations and communities over the long term.
What kinds of emergency seed aid can best meet immediate needs while strengthening local seed systems? IFPRI is now examining this issue in conflict-affected areas of northern Ethiopia and northern Nigeria, with funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) under CGIAR’s Breeding for Tomorrow program, with fieldwork set to begin this month (November 2026).