About 645 million people, or 7.8% of the world’s population, suffered from hunger last year, a slight improvement which, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns, could be undermined this year by war in the Middle East and climate shocks.
The situation is especially severe in Africa, where 20% of the population is undernourished, meaning they face a chronic lack of calories, according to the FAO’s annual report.
After the post-Covid economic crisis pushed millions more people into hunger, with 688 million affected in 2022, conditions improved last year but remained worse than before the pandemic.
Africa has overtaken Asia as the global hunger hotspot - FAO
In 2015, when around 600 million people were affected by hunger, the international community set a sustainable development goal to end hunger and ensure everyone has access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food by 2030.
The UN now expects between 510 million and 520 million people to remain undernourished in 2030, more than half of them in Africa.
“The centre of gravity of hunger has shifted from Asia to Africa,” David Laborde, director of the FAO’s agrifood economics division, told French news agency AFP.
He said China had overcome its hunger problem over the past 25 years, while India was also making major efforts to tackle theirs.
About 25.8% of the world's people face moderate to severe food insecurity
Laborde said farmers and food systems had shown resilience in the face of international conflicts, climate shocks and the macroeconomic crisis caused by Covid-19, noting that the world had avoided the major famines seen in the 1980s.
However, he warned that food systems have only limited capacity to absorb repeated shocks.
Beyond hunger, 2.1 billion people, or 25.8% of the global population, faced moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning food intake may be sufficient in calories but meals are irregular or lack variety.
The report also found that 2.69 billion people, nearly one in three worldwide, cannot afford a healthy diet, with food costs rising by 25% over five years.
Stunting still affects about a quarter of children under five, although the number fell to 150 million in 2024 from 180 million in 2012.
At the same time, adult obesity continued to rise, reaching 16.2% in 2024, with the rate projected to climb to 18.6% by 2030.
