How EU Auditors Assess the Fight Against Hunger

The European court of auditors published itsits “Special report 20/2025: Commission support to fight hunger in sub‑Saharan Africa” in November 2025. (1) One could end this article before it begins with the ECA’s (European Court of Auditors) summary: “The EU Commission’s support to fight hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa was commendable but put insufficient focus on sustainability and impact.”

In Germany, reports by the Federal Court of Audit only make the news if its summary suggests that the government failed and wasted taxpayers' money. But that is not how this report can be summarized – even if the ECA‘s summary might suggest that. And even if those who want to fuel the narrative that development cooperation is a waste of taxpayer’s money try to interpret it that way. The report shows where the right path has been taken and urges the Commission not to stray from it, but to proceed with even greater focus.

Why now?

The EU, together with member states, is the largest provider of development aid globally. At least until now, the EU has always been seen as a committed partner in efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2: ‘Zero Hunger’. The European Parliament’s Conference of Committee Chairs (CCC) suggested such a report. Since the last such report was compiled in 2012, it was time for an inventory of the fight against hunger by the EU.

However, it was probably not only the long period of time since the last report that played a role, but also the current negotiations on the EU budget, the so-called MFF (Multiannual Financial Framework) for 2028- 2034 onwards. There was a need to review previous expenditure in this area.

Framework conditions

The report states that hunger remains a critical global challenge: in 2024, 295 million people in 53 countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity, with 13,7 million more people needing urgent assistance than in 2023.

Globally, EU contracts amounting to €17 billion for hunger relief initiatives between 2014 and 2020, and to €6.2 billion between 2021 and 2024. Sub-Saharan Africa received the largest amount of this funding at over €11 billion, representing 48 % of the total (spread over several financial instruments).

So the overarching question that had to be answered was: Is the EU-Commission is effectively targeting and implementing actions to fight hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Projects in six countries were audited — Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia through on-site visits; Niger, Chad, and South Sudan through document reviews — with a particular focus on the link between humanitarian aid and development cooperation.

What Does the Audit Reveal?

The report presents its recommendations and comments under two main findings.

• The Commission’s actions did not always address the greatest needs and
• The Commission’s actions were valuable and coordinated satisfactorily, but lacked sufficient focus on impact and sustainability

The finding that the greatest needs were not addressed refers not only to the selection of project countries themselves, but also to the insufficient prioritization of the most relevant areas or population groups.

The report raises a sore point in development cooperation: Knowledge is available, extensively collected, and exchanged. However, when it comes to project implementation and design, the mistakes are repeated that, given the enormous advances in knowledge over the last few decades, should no longer occur. The report acknowledges that the Commission supports a wide range of initiatives to improve coordination and knowledge sharing in the fight against hunger, both financially and through expertise. These include the Global Network Against Food Crises, the Committee on World Food Security, the Commission's Knowledge Centre for Global Food and Nutrition Security, the DeSIRA initiative, the Global Nutrition Report, and the Scaling Up Nutrition platform.

This engagement provides the ideal conditions for designing and implementing successful projects and thus achieving a long-term, sustainable impact. Nevertheless, there is clearly a gap between good preconditions and implementation. The negatively highlighted aspects in this report are reminiscent of criticism that was already being levelled at development projects 30 years ago and has been addressed regularly by many actors, including WHH.

Predictable Deficits

Knowing projects in this field are more successful and more sustainable when the local population is involved in project design, the auditors had to conclude that most of the projects lacked such involvement. The report mentions concrete examples for other well-known project design flaws. Projects in Kenya and Zambia contributed to the same overall objective – but have been implemented in silos, in isolation, without achieving complementarities or synergies.

In the same countries projects intended to provide favourable loans for smallholder farmers to expand or diversify their businesses – but these loans only became available two years after the start date of those projects and thus missed their actual target. It also lists “classic” examples like non-accessibility of climate-resilient seeds due to remote geographical location although results of the two-year project period were promising. The lack of funds and availability of spare parts for water tanks, irrigation pipes, and solar pumps for a community after the end of an innovative irrigation project are also among the classic mistakes in project design.

Knowledge Not Applied

The report clearly states that the Commission “did not make sufficient use of available knowledge on the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa (climate change, conflicts, economic crisis, low national capacities and funding, high level of poverty and inequalities) when designing projects.” In other words, the projects mainly focused on the symptoms and not the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition.

Another point of criticism is the lack of flexibility and adaptability of development projects. Not even one of the projects included so-called crisis modifiers (i.e. the possibility of temporary financial or operational adjustments due to exceptional crisis conditions). Contingency reserves of a maximum of 5% of the budget that were available in some of the development projects audited are considered to be fundamentally too low to address significant unforeseen events such as droughts, floods, or conflicts effectively.

If Brussels' fundamental desire to strengthen the humanitarian-development-peace nexus approach is to be taken seriously, then there needs to be a much greater willingness to be flexible and adapt project designs to rapidly changing conditions. Otherwise, the vision that a joint consideration of both assistance and peace will result in better crisis response and greater resilience will not be realized.

According to the report, the effective implementation of the nexus approach also requires more effort at implementation on the country level but also elimination of differences in program cycles, mandates, and approaches between DG INTPA (Directorate-General for International Partnerships, responsible for development projects) and DG Echo (Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, responsible for humanitarian aid projects). However, such changes must be complemented by sufficient deployment of Commission staff to ensure close coordination of food systems interventions — to prevent them from becoming unsustainable.

It is no secret that Brussels likes to come up with initiatives with appealing or promising names — but on closer inspection, these fail to live up to expectations. The report addresses one such case. The auditors examined the success of the Team Europe response to global food security, which was decided in 2022. This so-called Team Europe initiative (TEI) is currently considered to be only a theoretical concept with limited practical impact on hunger relief – lacking the effective cooperation and coordination between the EU, its member states, their implementing agencies, and development finance institutions.

Where is the European Commission Heading?

Looking at the findings of the report, it is worrying that the narratives propagated in the EU are increasingly characterized by buzzwords such as „transactionality" — the eradication of hunger is apparently no longer seen as a value in itself. Taking this idea further, there is even less prospect of a future focus on the greatest needs and sustainable impacts instead of short-term project outcomes. It can be assumed that precisely in areas where needs are greatest — particularly in the areas of hunger and poverty — the capacity or potential for transactionality is very low in current EU priority areas such as migration, security, competitiveness, or geopolitical influence.

The report also emphasizes that the deprioritization of food security and nutrition has been evident for some time and is continuing. Whereas these two sectors were focal sectors in the previous programming period, focus has now shifted to sustainable aquatic and agricultural food systems (SAAFS).

Another disadvantage for food security and nutrition is the expansion of the INTPA focus areas. “Green transformation,” “green and resilient economy,” “Green Deal,” and “inclusive and sustainable growth” are so broadly defined that they now offer little room for genuine strategic focus and tend to spread resources and risks too widely, thereby reducing their impact.

Even though the original idea was different, the deprioritization is being accelerated by Global Gateway, as neither food security nor malnutrition are considered direct policy areas for its projects. Instead, the focus is strongly on areas such as climate and energy, digitalization, transport, health, education, and research.

Global Gateway was launched in 2021 by the European Commission and the EU High Representative (~EU Foreign Minister) in response to growing global demand for infrastructure and increasing geopolitical competition. The initiative was conceived as the EU's response to major international projects such as China's Belt and Road Initiative (New Silk Road) and is intended to offer a value-oriented, sustainable, and transparent alternative.

Global Gateway functions as a strategic framework rather than a single financing instrument. It coordinates EU institutions, member states, development banks, and private investors to implement large-scale infrastructure projects.

The Positive Points of the Report

To counterbalance the rather negative overall impression, it should be added that the coordination and knowledge sharing efforts in the fight against hunger are commendable and form a good basis for successful interventions. The efforts and frameworks for the humanitarian-development-peace nexus also offer great potential.

Despite all the criticism, it must be said that meaningful short-term support has been provided to people suffering from hunger and that the obstacles identified to long-term impact and sustainability are not new. The report does not deny the benefits of support, but addresses the shortcomings of the current system, which are also regularly raised by NGOs such as WHH. Inflexible projects with too short a duration, which do not sufficiently involve local communities and do not take sufficient account of existing knowledge about root causes, recklessly squander opportunities for long-term impact and sustainability.

It may be a coincidence, but in its Annex III, the report rates the only one of the projects examined that had an international non-governmental organization as its implementing partner as the most positive overall. This is a project in Zambia (“Economic, nutritional, and technical support for achieving higher economic returns and profits in sustainable agriculture in Zambia”). It is also the only project to receive the best rating for monitoring and sustainability.

In order to get back on track and continue in a positive direction, the Court of Auditors has formulated the following recommendations:

• Strengthen targeting and document the criteria applied to prioritise development support for fighting hunger
• Strengthen the design of development projects
• Strenghten the implementation of the humanitarian-development-peace nexus
• Reinforce the Commission’s monitoring and reporting framework
• Enhance the sustainability of projects

These recommendations of the Court of Auditors are linked to the announcement of a follow-up review in three years.

It is to be hoped that by then the EU will have begun to reconsider its position and will no longer prioritize its own short- and medium-term (economic) interests above all else, as is currently being propagated, but will instead pursue the long-term and sustainable improvement of living conditions for all, for the benefit of all, in line with the SDGs. As the report shows, all the positive foundations are in place.

Footnote:

_{1) European Court of Auditors, special report 20/2025: “Commission support to fight hunger in sub-Saharan Africa – Commendable but insufficient focus on sustainability and impact”, Publications Office of the European Union, 2025.}