Global hunger fell in 2025 for the third year running, but progress is too slow to meet the sustainable development goals by 2030, warns the new edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFIB) report published by five United Nations agencies.
According to the report, hunger in 2025 affected 7.8 per cent of the world’s population, or around 645 million people. This is 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than in 2022, when 8.6 per cent of the population was hungry.
Progress, however, is uneven. While Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean are seeing stable improvements, Africa has become the continent with the most hungry people: in 2025, 309 million people there did not have enough to eat, compared with 292 million in Asia. The share of hungry people in Africa has fallen slightly, from 20.3 per cent to 20 per cent, but due to rapid population growth the continent now leads in absolute numbers.
Around 2.1 billion people, or more than a quarter of humanity, experienced food insecurity last year. In Africa, more than half of the population, 56.6 per cent, was affected, while in North America and Europe the share fell to 8.7 per cent.
The UN agencies warn that conflict in the Middle East, extreme weather, and cuts to development and humanitarian aid could undermine progress. The chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Máximo Torero, stated that the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz would affect food production and yields. “We are simulating that between 510 and 520 million people could still be facing hunger in 2030,” he said, depending on the duration of pressure on energy and fertiliser prices. The potential effects of the El Niño pattern in 2026 and 2027 are not included in the projections.
The report notes that healthy diets are becoming more expensive: the global average cost rose in 2025 to $4.28 per person per day, up from $2.94 in 2017. The number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet, however, fell from 2.97 billion in 2021 to 2.69 billion, but in Africa 66.6 per cent of the population cannot afford it, more than double the levels in Asia and Latin America.
