Africa’s food insecurity has eased for the first time in a decade. The next task is making the gains harder to reverse.

Opinion piece by Maximo Torero, Chief Economist for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Across Africa last year, fewer people were uncertain about their ability to obtain adequate food or were forced to reduce the quality and quantity of what they ate. It was the first continent-wide improvement in food insecurity in a decade. The Hunger rate declined for the first time in nearly a decade, from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025. Moderate or severe food insecurity fell from 58.5 to 56.6 per cent, which is 8.6 million fewer people. Severe food insecurity also declined. Child stunting is falling. Even hunger, which had been rising on the continent since 2017, appears to have stopped climbing.

The change is modest, but it could mark a real turning point. After a decade of deterioration, Africa has shown that the architecture behind food security can work. Keeping that progress alive will require a second shift: from reducing hunger alone to making nutritious diets affordable. Investments in institutions, infrastructure, markets, and fiscal choices shape prices long before food reaches a household. For twenty years, a core of African countries has been building parts of that architecture: agricultural research and extension services, veterinary networks, rural roads and market links, and statistical agencies that measure deprivation through household surveys. The gains arrived as external financing was becoming less reliable. Aid remains essential, especially in conflict-hit countries where it keeps people alive. But this moment makes national capacity, smarter public spending, and resilient supply chains more important. Whether governments now apply those tools to the cost of healthy diets will decide whether 2025 opens an era of durable progress or records a single good year.

Africa still confronts a food security challenge larger than any other region’s. The continent has more hungry people than anywhere on earth, 309 million, and by 2030 it will be home to 56 per cent of everyone still facing hunger worldwide. Two in three Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, a share still rising even as it falls in other parts of the world. Yet the gains rest on long national records. Over the past two decades, Senegal cut the share of its people facing hunger from 15.8 to 5.3 per cent. Togo went from 24.6 to 10.2 per cent, Ghana from 11.1 to 6.4, Côte d’Ivoire from 17.6 to 11.4, Rwanda from 31.8 to 22.6, and Mozambique from 29.2 to 22.3, holding course through price crises and a pandemic. Progress of that length is policy, not weather.

Making healthy diets affordable will be harder than reducing hunger alone. The obstacle is the price of the foods that make a diet healthy rather than merely filling: milk, eggs, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Animal source foods are the highest-cost food group in Africa, and 69 per cent of African countries rank in the highest-cost tercile globally for this category, while starchy staples contribute relatively little to the total cost of a healthy diet. Those prices are built link by link, through animal disease, limited cold chains, weak roads, high energy costs, and thin local markets, long before anything reaches a market stall. Staples have kept getting cheaper while many of the foods that matter most remain stubbornly dear.

African governments can fund much of this shift by redirecting subsidies they already pay. A blanket 10 per cent production subsidy cuts the cost of a healthy diet by about 4 per cent in Africa, roughly half of what the same money buys in Latin America, so the question is where those budgets are aimed more than how large they are. Point them at animal health, breeding and aquaculture, at cold chains, rural roads and cheaper power, at research into the fruits, vegetables, and legumes every healthy diet needs, and the cost structure that keeps two in three Africans priced out begins to move.

African systems cannot yet do every part of this job alone. In the countries locked in acute food crises, the same conflict-hit states dragging the continental averages, external assistance keeps people alive. The statistical services that made this year’s gains visible also depend on funding now under pressure. The 2025 estimates describe conditions before this year’s cuts fully arrived; the bill comes due in 2026 and beyond.

One year of progress does not make a trend, but it does clarify the task. African governments have shown what their systems can do against the odds. The same capacity now needs to be aimed at the cost of nutritious food, the one number still moving the wrong way. The first improvement in a decade is on the board. The job now is to make it permanent.

ENDS

Read the full report: The State of Food Security and Nutrition 2026

Read the overview: EN: https://doi.org/10.4060/ce0318en   FR: https://doi.org/10.4060/ce0318fr 

Read the press release: UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist ENG

UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist

The 2026 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) also examines the cost of healthy diets

21/07/2026

Rome – Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, released on Tuesday by five United Nations specialized agencies.

The report estimates that 7.8 percent of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022, confirming a sustained, albeit slow, improvement. This means that around 645 million people were affected by hunger in 2025, representing a reduction of nearly 14 million compared to 2024 and 43 million compared to 2022.

Despite global progress, recovery remains uneven across regions. Asia, together with Latin America and the Caribbean, has recorded steady improvements in recent years. In contrast, Africa is now home to approximately 309 million hungry people, compared with 292 million in Asia. Although Africa’s previously rising trend is beginning to stabilize, with the share of its population facing hunger decreasing from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025, the continent now has the highest number of hungry people in absolute terms amid a rapidly growing population.

Broader measures of food access tell a similar story. In 2025, an estimated 25.8 percent of the global population (around 2.1 billion people) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they were at times forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they ate. This is down from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020 – equivalent to nearly 86 million fewer people than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020, though still above pre-pandemic levels.

Regional disparities remain stark. More than half of Africa’s population (56.6 percent) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, compared to 20.3 percent in Asia, 22.9 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7 percent in Northern America and Europe. Food insecurity also continues to be more prevalent in rural areas than in peri-urban and urban areas, while women remain disproportionately affected, although the gender gap narrowed slightly in 2025.

Hunger projections in the context of the Middle East conflict

The annual report also offers updated hunger projections for the next five years in light of the conflict in the Middle East. Depending on the length of the impact of the crisis on food inflation – which is driven by higher energy and fertilizer prices – approximately 510 to 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030 (compared to the lower projection of 503 million in the pre-conflict scenario), with the global number of undernourished people expected to decrease by 20 percent. However, other potential disruptors, including the effects of weather extremes such as El Niño in 2026 and 2027, are not considered in these projections and could further compound these effects.

The report’s joint authors – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) – warn that the 2026 Middle East conflict, along with weather extremes and the reductions in official development assistance and humanitarian funding, are threatening to undermine the progress made to end global hunger.

Slow progress on global nutrition targets

The report highlights that global progress on maternal and child nutrition also remains insufficient to meet international commitments, including the 2030 nutrition targets.

Indicators such as child stunting, wasting, overweight, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding show only marginal improvements and progress is too slow to meet the targets. At the same time, anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years is worsening, while the prevalence of adult obesity shows a steady increase – from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024 – contrary to the target of halting its rise by 2025. Only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimally diverse diet and 150 million children under five years of age are still stunted.

Progress again varies significantly across regions. The prevalence of child stunting is declining in Africa and is on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, while exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving across all regions where data is available. However, nearly all regions are experiencing widening gaps in addressing anaemia among women, and child overweight is increasing rapidly in Oceania.

The cost of a healthy diet

This year’s SOFI report takes a closer look at the cost of a healthy diet – the average minimum expenditure required to obtain locally available foods that meet energy and most nutrient requirements. According to FAO and WHO, a healthy diet is one that is adequate, balanced, diverse, and moderate.

The report underscores that costs remain a major constraint to achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), although lowering such costs alone will not be sufficient to improve dietary quality and nutrition outcomes.

In 2025, the average global cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, up from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017, with the highest levels recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean (4.91 PPP dollars). At the same time, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet has declined – from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the global population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025.

However, this trend masks significant regional disparities. In Africa, affordability worsened markedly, with 66.6 percent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025 – more than double the levels observed in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Healthy diet costs vary widely across regions due to structural differences in agrifood systems. Animal source foods, fruits and vegetables account for the largest share of costs, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. Animal source foods are the largest contributor to the cost of a healthy diet in Africa, whereas vegetables represent the largest share in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Food value chains are a major determinant of prices. Post-farmgate activities account for 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay, with up to 40 percent of total costs arising in processing, logistics and wholesale. Improving efficiency in these segments is therefore critical, particularly for lowering the cost of perishable, nutrient-rich foods.

Reducing the cost of a healthy diet requires context-specific policy responses that expand the supply of nutritious foods while lowering structural costs across agrifood value chains. This includes investments in infrastructure, research and development, irrigation and cold chains, alongside reforms in subsidies, trade facilitation and regulatory frameworks.

Targeted interventions that boost productivity, reduce losses and promote sustainable practices can simultaneously improve nutrition outcomes, strengthen resilience and support climate goals.

“The work that lies ahead over the years to 2030 is immense. However, a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building,” the report argues.

What they said

FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu: “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 disaster 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.”

IFAD President, Alvaro Lario: “SOFI tells us that the cost of a healthy diet continues to rise and that nearly 2.7 billion people may still be unable to afford a healthy diet. Resilient value chains must be a central part of the answer. Our task now is to turn the evidence SOFI provides into investment – and to do so through partnership. Together, we can build the value chains, market systems and rural economies that make healthy food affordable for all.”

UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell: “Every child deserves the chance to grow and develop to their full potential, and this starts with access to nutritious, affordable food. This report is a stark reminder that food systems fail millions of children and families. Food, health, education and social protection must go hand in hand to protect the most vulnerable children and women from global shocks.”

WFP Acting Executive Director, Carl Skau: “Behind every number in this report is a family counting the cost of food. Conflict and climate shocks push them further beyond their means. We must continue working with partner agencies, governments and communities to build food systems that hold up under shock, so families can afford nutritious diets, even in times of crisis. We now need sustained investment to match the scale of the challenge.”

WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: « 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. »

Contact

FAO News and Media
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FAO-Newsroom@fao.org

Nicholas Rigillo
FAO News and Media (Rome)
Nicholas.Rigillo@fao.org

Alberto Trillo Barca
Communication Officer, IFAD
a.trillobarca@ifad.org

Nadia Samie-Jacobs
UNICEF, Communication Specialist (Media)
nsamie@unicef.org

Jordan Cox
WFP/Rome
jordan.cox@wfp.org

Ni Jin
Communications Officer
jinn@who.int

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