The number of people suffering from undernourishment globally remains scandalously high, pushing the world far off track to meet the goal of eliminating hunger and malnutrition. According to a report released on July 24th by five UN agencies, around 733 million people worldwide were chronically undernourished in 2023. This is around 152 million people more than in 2019 before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ (SOFI), a report released each year by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), shows enormous setbacks, with levels of undernourishment comparable to those in 2008-2009. “While we have made some progress, improvements have been uneven and insufficient. We have seen improvement in more populous countries with growing economies, but hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition continue to increase in many countries around the world,” the heads of the five UN organisations write in their joint foreword to the report. “This is affecting millions of people especially in rural areas, where extreme poverty and food insecurity remain deeply entrenched. Vulnerable populations, particularly women, youth and Indigenous Peoples, are disproportionately affected.” If current trends continue, about 582 million people will still be chronically undernourished in 2030, more than half of them in Africa, making it virtually impossible to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 of zero hunger.

The new edition of the SOFI report, like the three previous ones, gives a range of people suffering from hunger to reflect the uncertainty in data collection. It is estimated that chronic hunger affected between 713 and 757 million people in 2023. Considering the middle of the projected range (733 million), the number of undernourished people has increased by 26% since 2019 when it stood at 581,3 million based on the revised figures of this report. The proportion of people affected by hunger (called the prevalence of undernourishment) rose from 7.5% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2023, meaning that one in eleven people go hungry. According to the UN agencies, the drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition are “conflict, climate variability and extremes, economic slowdowns and downturns, lack of access to and unaffordability of healthy diets, unhealthy food environments, and high and persistent inequality”.

The trends across and within world regions varied significantly. Africa remains the worst-affected region with respect to the prevalence of undernourishment, with one in five people (20.4%) going hungry on the continent – more than twice the global average – whereas Asia accounts for the largest total numbers. More than half (52.4%) of the 733 million people who were undernourished in 2023 lived in Asia (384.5 million people), followed by Africa with 298.4 million (or 40.7%) and Latin America and the Caribbean with 41 million (5.6%). Hunger increased in most subregions of Africa from 2022 to 2023, with the exception of Eastern Africa and Southern Africa. In Middle Africa, the sub-region including countries such as Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the prevalence of undernourishment rose by 3.3 percentage points to reach 30.8%. In Eastern Africa, 28.6% of the population faced hunger in 2023. In Asia, 8.1% of all people were affected in 2023 but the figure was much higher for the sub-regions of South Asia (13.9%) and Western Asia (12.4%). In Southern Asia, some progress was made compared to the previous two years while the situation deteriorated in Western Asia, where hunger has been on the rise since 2015. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region has shown progress for two consecutive years, with the share of undernourished people decreasing to 6.1% in 2023. This is mainly driven by improvements in South America while the prevalence of undernourishment in the Caribbean increased to 17.2%.

The report also offers some key insights into other nutrition-related topics. It provides data on the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Moderate food insecurity is defined as “a level of severity of food insecurity at which people face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food” meaning that they are forced “to reduce, at times during the year, the quality and/or quantity of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources”. Overall, 28.9% of the world population or 2.33 billion people did not have year-round access to adequate food in 2023. This is an increase of almost 383 million people compared to 2015 or 3.9 percentage points. Out of these 2.33 billion people, 864.1 million people (or 10.7% of all people in the world), were severely food insecure which means they ran out of food, experienced hunger and, at the most extreme, went for days without eating, putting their health and well-being at grave risk. This is an increase of almost 310 million people compared 2015. At 58%, Africa remains the region with the largest proportion of the population facing moderate or severe food insecurity – nearly double the global average. From 2022 to 2023, moderate or severe food insecurity remained virtually unchanged in Africa and Asia, while it worsened in Oceania and, to a lesser extent, in Northern America and Europe. In contrast, some progress was made in Latin American.

Another problem is the limited capacity of people to access healthy diets. The average cost of a healthy diet globally rose to 3.96 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, up from 3.56 PPP dollars in 2021. Disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine contributed to significant increases in international food and energy prices, exacerbating the pressures of inflation. In 2022, more than 2.8 billion people – or 35.5% of people globally – could not afford a healthy diet. The good news is that the number decreased slightly from 36.5% in 2021. However, the recovery has been uneven across regions, the report warns: “The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in Asia, and Northern America and Europe, while increasing substantially in Africa, where it rose to 924.8 million in 2022, up by 24.6 million from 2021, and by 73.4 million from 2019.” If country income groups are compared, the situation is very difficult for low-income countries, where a healthy diet was out of reach for 503.2 million people in 2022 – the highest number since 2017. In low-income countries the percentage of the population that could not afford a healthy diet was 71.5% whereas in high-income countries the figure was 6.3%.

The report also paints a gloomy picture of the nutritional situation of the world’s children. The global prevalence of wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade. An estimated 45 million children under the age of five (6.8%) were suffering from wasting in 2022, down slightly from 7.5% in 2012. Affected children are dangerously thin, with weakened immunity and a higher risk of mortality. In addition, the global prevalence of stunting in children under five years of age is still at 22.3%, affecting 148.1 million children who are too short for their age due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets. Although the figure is down from 26.3% or 177.9 million children in 2012, the world is currently not on track to achieve the target of halving the number of stunted children under five by 2030 since it is projected that 19.5% will still be stunted by then. The global prevalence of overweight among children under five years of age has stagnated, with little change from 5.5% (37 million) in 2012 to 5.6% (37 million) in 2022. By 2030, 5.7% of children under five are projected to be overweight, which is almost double the 2030 global target of 3%.

To cut a long story short, the world is not on track to reach any of the seven global nutrition targets by 2030. The five UN agencies say that in order to attain the scale of actions needed, sufficient levels of and equal access to financing to address food security and nutrition challenges are essential. The theme of this year’s report therefore focuses on the financing required to end hunger and malnutrition. The report highlights that countries most in need of increased financing face significant challenges in access. Among the 119 low- and middle-income countries analysed, around 63% have limited or moderate access to financing. Additionally, the majority of these countries (74%) are impacted by one or more major factors contributing to food insecurity and malnutrition. “The fastest route out of hunger and poverty is proven to be through investments in agriculture in rural areas. But the global and financial landscape has become far more complex since the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015,” says IFAD President Alvaro Lario. “Ending hunger and malnutrition demands that we invest more - and more smartly.” (ab)