Around 55 million people in west and central Africa are facing acute food insecurity this year, with people already starving in Nigeria's Borno state, the United Nations said Friday.

Violence across the entire region has triggered a hunger crisis that is being exacerbated by aid cuts, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said.

WFP said it's had to slash its food assistance in the area as funding dries up.

In west and central Africa, "a staggering 55 million people will be facing acute food insecurity in the upcoming lean season between June and August 2026", Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP's food security and nutrition analysis director, said.

Those people are in the crisis, emergency and catastrophe phases of hunger -- the three worst of five levels used to assess food insecurity.

The number of people in emergency conditions has doubled since 2020, to three million, he said.

And 15,000 people in specific areas of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria are in the catastrophe phase -- the first time this level has been reached in a decade.

"This is a group that's one step away from famine," Bauer said, speaking from WFP's headquarters in Rome.

"That does mean that people are dying... people are starving."

Borno state is the epicentre of a jihadist insurgency that began in 2009.

The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million others in the northeast and spilled into neighbouring countries. (AFP)