Africa has overtaken Asia for the first time as the continent with the largest number of people suffering from hunger, according to a new United Nations report, highlighting a worsening food crisis driven by conflict, climate shocks and deepening poverty.
The findings are contained in the 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report released Tuesday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and four other UN agencies.
Although the report noted modest global progress in reducing hunger, it warned that Africa is moving in the opposite direction, with undernourishment continuing to rise across much of the continent.
According to the report, an estimated 309 million Africans, about 20 per cent of the continent’s population, experienced hunger in 2025, surpassing Asia’s 292 million people, which account for six per cent of its population.
David Laborde, Director of the Agrifood Economics Division at the FAO, said the global hunger map has undergone a dramatic shift over the past two decades.
“The centre of gravity of hunger has shifted from Asia to Africa,” Laborde told AFP.
He attributed Asia’s progress to sustained investments in food security, particularly by China and India, while warning that Africa has struggled to achieve similar gains.
“Twenty-five years ago China still had a problem with hunger, but they solved it; India also has a problem, but they are putting lots of effort into actively resolving it,” he said.
Despite the grim outlook for Africa, the report said global hunger has shown signs of improvement. The proportion of the world’s population facing hunger declined from 8.6 per cent in 2022 to 7.8 per cent in 2025, reducing the number of hungry people worldwide by about 43 million to 645 million.
However, the UN agencies stressed that global hunger levels remain above those recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic, while Africa continues to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden.
The report also found that access to nutritious food has deteriorated across the continent. About 66.6 per cent of Africans are unable to afford a healthy diet—more than double the proportion recorded in Asia.
To reverse the trend, the UN urged African governments to prioritise reforms in the livestock and animal-source food sector, which it identified as the costliest component of healthy diets across the continent.
The report blamed a combination of armed conflicts, economic hardship and increasingly severe climate-related disasters for worsening food insecurity in Africa.
(AFP)
Laborde singled out the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo as major contributors to the crisis.
“Conflicts like the one in Sudan… in the Democratic Republic of Congo, also weigh heavily on people who cannot access their land or no longer have any income,” he told AFP.
The warning comes amid mounting humanitarian concerns across several conflict zones. The United Nations had warned in May that about 20 million people face acute food insecurity because of the war in Sudan.
The organisation also cautioned in June that an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East could push millions more people into acute hunger globally.
While rising energy and fertiliser costs linked to the Middle East conflict have not yet significantly disrupted global food supplies, Laborde warned the crisis remains unpredictable.
“The impact of rising energy and fertiliser costs remains limited for the moment, but the crisis is not yet over,” he said.
The report underscores the growing urgency for coordinated international action as Africa emerges as the epicentre of the global hunger crisis, with millions facing worsening food insecurity despite gradual improvements in other parts of the world.
