Azernews.Az

Ulviyya Poladova

Read more

Global hunger declined for the third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the gains remain fragile and are far too slow to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, AzerNEWS reports.

It was presented in the latest edition of the "State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World" (SOFI) report, published by five United Nations agencies.

Estimates show that 7.8 percent of the world’s population, or approximately 645 million people, experienced hunger in 2025. This is around 43 million fewer people than in the previous four years. While Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have recorded steady improvements in recent years, Africa is currently home to the largest number of people facing hunger. In 2025, approximately 309 million people on the continent were undernourished, compared with 292 million in Asia. Although the prevalence of hunger in Africa declined from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent the following year, rapid population growth means that the continent now has the largest absolute number of people suffering from hunger.

Broader measures of food access tell a similar story. In 2025, an estimated 25.8 percent of the global population (around 2.1 billion people) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they were at times forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they ate. This is down from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020 - equivalent to nearly 86 million fewer people than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020, though still above pre-pandemic levels.

According to the report, although there was some progress in reducing global hunger in 2025 compared with 2020 and 2024, the level remains higher than before the pandemic.

In Africa, more than half of the population - 56.6 percent - experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. The figure was 20.3 percent in Asia, 22.9 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7 percent in North America and Europe.

The UN also highlighted the impact of conflict, climate change and rising costs on global hunger. The annual SOFI report is published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The agencies warn that conflicts in the Middle East, increasingly extreme weather conditions, and declining official development assistance and humanitarian funding could undermine recent progress toward ending global hunger.