Africa has overtaken Asia as the continent with the highest number of people facing hunger for the first time, according to a new United Nations report released on Tuesday.
The report, jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and four other UN agencies, said 309 million people in Africa suffered from hunger in 2025, representing 20 per cent of the continent’s population, AFP reported.
By comparison, 292 million people in Asia, or about six per cent of its population, experienced hunger during the same period. The report said the figures mark a major shift in the global distribution of hunger, even as the overall number of undernourished people continues to decline.
It also found that Africa has the highest share of people unable to afford a healthy diet, with about 66.6 per cent of the population unable to do so, more than twice the proportion recorded in Asia.
The Director of the Agrifood Economics Division at the FAO, David Laborde, attributed Asia’s progress to sustained efforts by countries such as China and India.
“The centre of gravity of hunger has shifted from Asia to Africa. 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,” Laborde told AFP.
Globally, the share of people facing hunger fell from 8.6 per cent in 2022 to 7.8 per cent in 2025, reducing the number of undernourished people by about 43 million to 645 million.
However, the report noted that global hunger remains above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
The UN agencies said that although undernourishment in Africa has risen steadily since 2017, preliminary estimates for 2025 point to signs of improvement.
They urged African governments to prioritise reforms in the animal-source food sector, which they described as the region’s most expensive food group. The report also linked worsening food insecurity across the continent to climate-related shocks and armed conflicts.
“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,” Laborde said.
The UN had earlier warned that about 20 million people in Sudan are facing acute food insecurity because of the ongoing conflict, while the prolonged crisis in the Middle East could push millions more into hunger.
