By Magdalena Del Valle, Bloomberg.
World hunger fell in 2024, as declines in Asia and South America offset an increase in the number of people who lacked adequate diets in Africa, according to a UN analysis released Monday.
The share of the global population that couldn’t afford enough food slipped to 8.2% in 2024 from 8.5% the year before, according to the report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Improved food security in Southeast and South Asia and South America helped boost the global average.
The improvement came even as food prices continued to rise, outpacing headline inflation since 2020, according to the report. The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and climate change contributed to the increases.
Poor countries bore the brunt of the higher prices. In Africa, the number of people who could not pay for a healthy diet surpassed 1 billion in 2024, up from from 864 million the year before, the report found.
As a whole, food-price inflation hit low-income and lower-middle-income countries the hardest, eroding household purchasing power and forcing people shift to cheaper and less nutritious food.
The UN report found that both anemia in women and obesity have been on the rise. Furthermore, child malnutrition can worsen with food price inflation, the study says.