A young boy with a donkey cart arrives to receive food aid in Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. File.
| Photo Credit: AP
Africa has for the first time become the continent with the largest number of people facing hunger, a UN report said Tuesday (July 21, 2026), as a growing number of Africans have faced undernourishment.
The UN’s annual report on food security and nutrition found that there has been gradual improvement towards reducing hunger overall in recent years, but that progress has been uneven.
“The centre of gravity of hunger has shifted from Asia to Africa,” said David Laborde, director of the agrifood economics division at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“Twenty-five years ago China still had a problem with hunger but they solved them; India also has a problem but they are putting lots of effort into actively resolving it,” he told AFP.
The report, put together by the FAO and four other UN agencies, estimated that hunger affected 309 million people in Africa last year, or 20% of the population.
It was followed by Asia, where 292 million people were touched by hunger, or 6% of the population.
Overall the proportion of the world population facing hunger decreased has decreased from 8.6% in 2022 to 7.8% in 2025, the UN agencies estimate.
While that represents a drop in 43 million people to 645 million, the agencies noted that is still higher than before the Covid pandemic.
The prevalence of undernourishment has also been on the rise in Africa since 2017, although the UN agencies said the most recent estimates point to signs of a turnaround in 2025.
Meanwhile the percentage of people who cannot afford a healthy diet has increased in Africa since 2021, while it has decreased in other regions of the world.
Two-thirds of Africans (66.6%) cannot afford a healthy diet, more than double the level in Asia.
The report encouraged African nations to prioritize transforming the animal source food sector, which is the most expensive food group in the region.
Africa has also been hit by severe climate-related shocks in recent years, and conflicts have aggravated the situation.
“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,” said Laborde.
The UN warned in May that 20 million people face acute food insecurity due to the war in Sudan.
The UN also warned in June that a prolonged Middle East war could push millions more people into acute hunger.
The impact of rising energy and fertiliser costs due to the war “remain limited for the moment”, Laborde said, but added the crisis is not yet over.
Published – July 21, 2026 10:55 pm IST