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UN Report: Africa Now Global Epicentre of Hunger as 66% Cannot Afford Healthy Diet
A new report from the United Nations has revealed that Africa has overtaken Asia to become the region with the highest number of hungry people in the world, while global hunger levels have declined for a third consecutive year. According to the 2026 edition of The State of Food Security……
A new report from the United Nations has revealed that Africa has overtaken Asia to become the region with the highest number of hungry people in the world, while global hunger levels have declined for a third consecutive year.
According to the 2026 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), released on Tuesday, approximately 309 million people in Africa faced hunger in 2025. While global hunger dipped to 7.8 per cent of the population, the continent remains a stark outlier in the fight to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
The report, jointly published by five UN agencies including the FAO and WHO, highlights a worrying trend: while Asia and Latin America have seen steady improvements, Africa’s recovery remains fragile. Although the percentage of the African population facing hunger decreased slightly from 20.3 per cent to 20.0 per cent, the absolute number of hungry people continues to rise due to rapid population growth.
Even more alarming for the continent is the data on food access. More than half of Africa’s population,56.6 per cent, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. This means nearly 60 out of every 100 people were forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they consumed.
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The report underscores that a “healthy diet” is increasingly becoming a luxury for Africans. In 2025, the global average cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day.
In Africa, the situation is particularly dire, with 66.6 per cent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet, a figure more than double the levels observed in Asia and Latin America. Experts attribute these high costs to structural issues in agrifood systems, noting that animal-iet on the continent
Global leaders are warning that conflict, climate shocks like El Niño, and reduced humanitarian funding threaten to reverse the modest progress made elsewhere.
The FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, emphasised the need for immediate intervention, saying “The report shows that progress is possible, but we must move faster. Ending hunger and making healthy diets affordable requires political commitment, sustained investment and enabling policies.
“Recent crises – from natural disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic to man-made disasters like hotspots of conflicts, the war in Ukraine, the Gaza crisis, and the recent Strait of Hormuz disruption – have demonstrated both the resilience of agrifood systems and the need to strengthen them further to better serve the world’s most vulnerable people, farmers and consumers.”
Echoing this sentiment, the World Health Organisation Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that the crisis extends beyond simple calorie counts:
“While we welcome the clear progress we have made in reducing hunger, a healthy diet still remains unaffordable for one in three people globally. Obesity is rising, and progress on maternal and child nutrition is stalling.
“But we know what works: policies that make healthy food the easy choice, promoting breastfeeding, front-of-pack labelling, taxing unhealthy products, and protecting children from harmful marketing. Healthy diets are not a luxury – they are the foundation of health and must be within everyone’s reach,” he said.
The report warned that if current trends and conflict disruptions in the Middle East continue, approximately 510 to 520 million people globally could still be facing hunger by 2030. To combat this, the UN argues for context-specific policies that lower structural costs across value chains—including investments in irrigation, cold chains, and infrastructure—to ensure that nutritious food is no longer out of reach for the world’s most vulnerable.
