Global hunger fell in 2024 for a third straight year, but conflict and climate shocks deepened crises in Africa and the Middle East.
Global hunger levels declined for a third consecutive year in 2024, according to a new United Nations report, as better access to food in South America and India offset deepening malnutrition and climate shocks in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Around 673 million people, or 8.2 percent of the world’s population, experienced hunger in 2024, down from 8.5 percent in 2023, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, jointly prepared by five UN agencies.
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The agencies include the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
The agencies said the report focused on chronic, long-term problems and did not fully reflect the impact of acute crises brought on by specific events and wars, including Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Conflict continues to drive hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in remarks delivered by video link from a UN food summit in Ethiopia on Monday, adding that “hunger further feeds future instability and undermines peace”.
The WHO has warned that malnutrition in the besieged Palestinian enclave has reached “alarming levels” since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2.
The blockade was partially lifted in May, but only a trickle of aid has been allowed to enter since then, despite warnings about mass starvation from the UN and aid organisations.
Hunger rate falls in South America, southern Asia
In 2024, the most significant progress was reported in South America and southern Asia, according to the UN report.
In South America, the hunger rate fell to 3.8 percent in 2024 from 4.2 percent in 2023. In southern Asia, it fell to 11 percent from 12.2 percent.
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Progress in South America was underpinned by improved agricultural productivity and social programmes, such as school meals, Maximo Torero, the chief economist at the FAO, told news agency Reuters.
In southern Asia, it was mostly due to new data from India showing more people with access to healthy diets.
The overall 2024 hunger numbers were still higher than the 7.5 percent recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hunger more prevalent in Africa
The picture was very different in Africa, where productivity gains were not keeping up with high population growth and the impacts of conflict, extreme weather and inflation.
In 2024, more than one in five people on the continent, or 307 million people, were chronically undernourished, meaning hunger is more prevalent than it was 20 years ago.
According to the current projection, 512 million people in the world may be chronically undernourished in 2030, with nearly 60 percent of them to be found in Africa, the report said.
“We must urgently reverse this trajectory,” said the FAO’s Torero.
A major mark of distress is the number of Africans unable to afford a healthy diet. While the global figure fell from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.6 billion in 2024, the number increased in Africa from 864 million to just over one billion during the same period.
That means the vast majority of Africans are unable to eat well on the continent of 1.5 billion people.
Inequalities
The UN report also highlighted “persistent inequalities” with women and rural communities most affected, which widened last year over 2023.
“Despite adequate global food production, millions of people go hungry or are malnourished because safe and nutritious food is not available, not accessible or, more often, not affordable,” it said.
The gap between global food price inflation and overall inflation peaked in January 2023, driving up the cost of diets and hitting low-income nations hardest, the report said.
The report also said that overall adult obesity rose to nearly 16 percent in 2022, from 12 percent in 2012.
