Global hunger declined for the third consecutive year in 2025, but Africa has emerged as the epicentre of the world's food crisis, with the continent now accounting for the highest number of hungry people globally, a new United Nations report has revealed.
The 2026 edition of "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)", released on Tuesday by five UN agencies, revealed that while global hunger dropped to 7.8 per cent of the world's population in 2025 from 8.1 per cent in 2024, Africa is now home to about 309 million hungry people, surpassing Asia's 292 million.
The report paints a troubling picture for the continent, showing that one in every five Africans experienced hunger in 2025, while more than half of the population faced moderate or severe food insecurity.
