The United Nations has documented a third consecutive year of decline in global hunger, yet the pace of improvement remains dangerously slow—and for those living in Africa, the reality is starkly different. A joint report released today by the FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO shows that while 645 million people worldwide faced hunger in 2025, marking a drop from 8.1% to 7.8% of the global population, the continent of Africa now accounts for nearly half of the world's undernourished, with 309 million people unable to access sufficient food.
Why This Matters
• Africa has overtaken Asia in absolute numbers of hungry people for the first time, despite a slight stabilization in the percentage of its population affected (down to 20% from 20.3%).
• Cost of healthy eating has surged to $4.28 per person per day globally in 2025, up from $2.94 in 2017—a 25% increase in five years that puts nutritious food out of reach for 2.69 billion people.
• Two out of three Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, compared to roughly one in four in Latin America and one in three in Asia.
• Geopolitical shocks—including the 2026 Middle East conflict and cuts to international aid—threaten to reverse fragile gains, with projections showing 510 to 520 million people will still suffer hunger by 2030.
What This Means for Italy and Europe
For Italy, this global crisis has immediate and tangible implications. As a leading voice in global food policy and home to the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy sits at the intersection of this challenge—both as a donor nation and as a country vulnerable to its ripple effects.
On the domestic front, inflation has driven up prices for olive oil, bread, and fresh fish—staples of the Mediterranean diet. While Italy remains far from the food insecurity levels seen in Africa or parts of Asia, rising food costs disproportionately affect low-income households and migrants, making affordability a key social policy concern. For Italian residents, global food market disruptions translate directly to higher supermarket prices and reduced purchasing power.
On trade and supply chains, instability in Africa threatens Italy's agricultural exports and food imports. As climate shocks and conflicts destabilize African production, price volatility ripples through global markets that Italian consumers depend on. Disruptions to shipping routes—particularly through the Strait of Hormuz—have direct consequences for fuel costs, which in turn inflate transportation and production expenses across Italy's food sector.
On migration, food insecurity in Africa remains a significant driver of irregular migration to Europe and Italy. As hunger deepens across the continent, pressure on sea routes and border regions intensifies, creating both humanitarian and security challenges for Italian communities.
On development cooperation, Italy's commitment to sustainable food systems through initiatives like the Food Coalition and Hand-in-Hand Initiative—programs designed to transform food systems in vulnerable countries—requires sustained funding and political will. Italian cooperation agencies have championed sustainable agriculture and nutrition-sensitive policies, but the scale of the current crisis demands renewed investment and coordination.
Africa's Crisis: A Perfect Storm of Structural Failures
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI) report, published by five UN agencies, reveals that Africa's hunger epidemic is not simply a matter of insufficient food production. It is the convergence of conflict, climate extremes, rapid population growth, and collapsing infrastructure that has locked the continent into a cycle of deprivation.
Climate and Environmental Shocks
In 2025, 56.6% of Africa's population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity—the highest rate globally—meaning millions were forced to skip meals, reduce portion sizes, or compromise on food quality. This compares to a global average of 25.8%. The continent's vulnerability is compounded by the fact that its agricultural sector remains heavily dependent on rain-fed farming, making it acutely susceptible to droughts and flooding driven by climate change. The year 2024 was the hottest on record, and the cascading effects on crop yields have been devastating.
Conflict and Weaponized Aid
Armed conflicts across the Sahel, Sudan, and parts of East Africa have shattered local economies, displaced millions, and turned food into a weapon of war. In Sudan alone, more than 24 million people faced acute food insecurity between December 2024 and May 2025, according to humanitarian assessments. Two famines were declared in 2025—one in Gaza, another in Sudan—both linked directly to the collapse of state infrastructure and the weaponization of aid.
Demographic and Economic Pressures
Africa's rapid demographic expansion continues to outpace agricultural productivity. The population is growing faster than the continent's ability to produce, store, and distribute food, with inadequate investment in cold chains, transportation networks, and modern farming techniques. This structural deficit is further exacerbated by a sharp reduction in international development aid, including the cessation of roughly 90% of U.S. foreign aid contracts in early 2025, which has left millions without access to malnutrition treatment programs. Current projections suggest that by 2030, 60% of the world's hungry will be African.
The Rising Cost of Nutrition: A Global Barrier
Beyond hunger, the report highlights an alarming trend: the cost of eating well is rising faster than household incomes. A healthy diet—defined as one that meets all nutritional requirements and reduces the risk of chronic disease—now costs $4.28 per day on average, with regional disparities that make it prohibitively expensive in much of the developing world.
Regional Price Disparities
Latin America and the Caribbean face the highest costs, at $4.91 per person per day, driven by inflation in staple foods like oil, bread, meat, and fresh fish. In Africa, where two-thirds of the population cannot afford such a diet, the barrier is less about absolute price and more about extreme poverty and lack of economic opportunity. In Asia, the figure stands at 28.9%, still representing hundreds of millions of people.
Geopolitical and Trade Risks
For Italy and other donor nations, this represents both a moral challenge and a geopolitical concern. As food becomes a lever of power—much like energy and critical minerals—instability in food-insecure regions can trigger mass migration, fuel extremism, and disrupt global supply chains. The report warns that the conflict in the Middle East and instability in the Strait of Hormuz pose direct threats to global food trade, as disruptions to shipping routes and energy costs ripple through agricultural supply chains dependent on fossil fuels for mechanization, transport, and fertilizer production.
Malnutrition Indicators: Slow and Uneven Progress
While hunger has declined marginally, other nutritional indicators remain stubbornly poor. Child malnutrition has improved only slightly, and exclusive breastfeeding rates have barely budged. At the same time, anemia among women continues to rise, and adult obesity is increasing across all regions—a dual problem that reflects both undernutrition and the proliferation of cheap, calorie-dense processed foods that lack nutritional value.
The report emphasizes that addressing malnutrition requires more than emergency food aid. It demands structural reforms across entire food systems: investment in agricultural research, development of resilient crop varieties, modernization of supply chains, and fiscal policies that make healthy food affordable. The WHO has called for taxation of unhealthy foods high in sugar, salt, and fat, combined with subsidies for fresh produce and whole foods. Some European countries, including France, have adopted front-of-package labeling systems like Nutri-Score to guide consumers toward healthier choices.
Solutions on the Horizon
The UN agencies behind the SOFI report are clear: reducing the cost of healthy diets requires long-term structural interventions, not quick fixes. These include:
• Infrastructure investment: Cold storage, irrigation systems, rural roads, and market access for smallholder farmers.
• Trade and subsidy reform: Reducing tariffs on nutritious foods, eliminating perverse subsidies that favor monocultures, and facilitating cross-border food trade.
• Climate adaptation: Developing drought-resistant crops, promoting agroforestry, and supporting farmers with climate risk insurance.
• Technology and innovation: Leveraging drones, satellite monitoring, vertical farming, and alternative proteins to boost productivity and reduce environmental impact.
• Social protection: Expanding cash transfer programs, school feeding initiatives, and public procurement policies that prioritize nutritious local food.
Critically, the report calls for restoring and expanding international development financing. The sharp cuts to humanitarian aid in 2025 have had immediate and measurable consequences, with over 13 million children in West and Central Africa projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2026. Without sustained global cooperation, the goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 will remain out of reach.
The Road to 2030: A Narrowing Window
Despite three years of modest progress, the world is not on track to eliminate hunger by the end of the decade. The SOFI 2026 report projects that between 510 and 520 million people will still be undernourished in 2030—roughly 80% of the current level. That represents a failure to meet the Sustainable Development Goal 2, which calls for zero hunger and improved nutrition for all.
The report's authors warn that the gains of 2025 are fragile and reversible. Climate shocks, geopolitical instability, and economic downturns could easily push millions back into food insecurity. The lessons are clear: food security is not just an agricultural issue—it is a matter of peace, governance, climate action, and economic justice. For countries like Italy, which have both the expertise and the political will to lead on these issues, the next four years will be decisive.
