The World Bank Board of Directors today approved a $137.5 million International Development Association (IDA) grant to help Somalia respond to and recover from multiple, ongoing, and overlapping crises.

With repeated cycles of flooding and drought over many years, swarms of desert locusts threatening food security, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, Somalia is in the grip of a climate – and now public health – emergency, which is only compounded by two decades of armed conflict, all of which are having a devastating effect on the lives and livelihoods of the Somalian people, 70% of whom are poor.