…1 in 5 Africans still goes hungry

…UN warns healthy diets remain beyond reach for billions

By Chioma Obinna

Global hunger declined for the third consecutive year in 2025, but Africa has emerged as the epicentre of the world’s food crisis, with the continent now accounting for the highest number of hungry people globally, a new United Nations report has revealed.

The 2026 edition of “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)”, released on Tuesday by five UN agencies, revealed that while global hunger dropped to 7.8 per cent of the world’s population in 2025 from 8.1 per cent in 2024, Africa is now home to about 309 million hungry people, surpassing Asia’s 292 million.