Progress on hunger continues, but Africa and new crises raise concerns: FAO Chief Economist

Rome - According to 2026 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, an estimated 7.8 percent of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022, confirming a sustained, albeit slow, improvement. In absolute terms, 645 million people were affected by hunger in 2025, a reduction of nearly 40 million people compared with 2024 and 43 million compared with 2022.

In an interview, the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Maximo Torero, discusses the key findings of this year’s SOFI report, including the latest hunger and nutrition trends and a special focus on the cost and affordability of healthy diets.

What are the main findings of the 2026 SOFI report?

In terms of food security, global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. There is a clear need to accelerate progress.

What does the report reveal about the situation in Africa?

Africa is now home to approximately 309 million hungry people, compared with 292 million people in Asia. It is the first time that the African continent has surpassed Asia in terms of numbers of people in hunger. Although it is important to note that the previously rising trend is beginning to stabilize, with the share of the population facing hunger decreasing from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025.

What has driven the decline in hunger in some regions, and where has progress been strongest?

According to SOFI 2026, the largest improvements have been in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, specifically in South America, driven by stronger economic growth, easing food inflation, expanded social protection and sustained investments in more productive and resilient agrifood systems that have improved both food availability and access. These gains demonstrate that reducing hunger is possible when economic policies, agrifood investments and social protection work together.

But it is also important to highlight the differences with Africa, because of the lack of conflicts and greater resilience to climate shocks, which is what is mostly affecting that continent.

How could the conflict in the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz crisis affect efforts to end hunger by 2030?

The SOFI numbers refer to before the Strait of Hormuz crisis. However, the report also offers updated projections for the next five years in light of the current crisis, which has been affecting between one quarter and one third of all inputs needed for agrifood systems.

Depending on the duration of the crisis and its effect on food inflation, we estimate that between 510 million and 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030, with the global number of undernourished people expected to decrease by 20 percent.

However, other potential disruptors, such as weather extremes associated with El Niño, are not part of these projections. So the estimates only incorporate the effects of the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

Why are countries struggling to meet global nutrition targets?

SOFI also reports on the structural indicators of nutrition, like child stunting, wasting, overweight, low birth weight and exclusive breastfeeding. The overall picture is that we are improving only marginally and too slowly to meet global targets.

On the other hand, we see some progress. The prevalence of child stunting is declining in Africa and is on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, while exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving across all regions where data is available.

However, nearly all regions are experiencing widening gaps in addressing anemia among women, and child overweight.

A major focus of this year’s SOFI is the affordability of healthy diets. What are the key drivers of the problem and what solutions does the report identify?

Healthy diets today remain out of reach for billions of people. A healthy diet costs 4.22 purchasing power parity dollars per person per day, more than the international extreme poverty line of around 3 purchasing power parity dollars per person per day.

Although affordability has improved globally, 2.69 billion people - nearly one in three - still cannot afford a healthy diet, with Africa falling further behind. The problem is not just food prices. Prices matter, but so do the underlying structures of agrifood systems and the way they operate.

The report highlights two key pillars for action.

The first is investing in infrastructure to increase production, productivity and reduce losses of high-value foods. The second is policy: subsidies for starchy foods do not necessarily lower the cost of healthy diets, while support for fruits and vegetables, combined with better value chains and market access, can make healthy diets more affordable. This is essential not only to reduce undernutrition, but also to tackle rising overweight and obesity.