More than a third of the world’s undernourished people, or 278 million, lived on the African continent in 2021. In total, thbetween 702 and 828 million people suffer from hunger. That’s nearly 10% of the world’s population. Food insecurity figures are on the rise on all continents, according to the latest report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on the state of food security and nutrition in the world.
“After a worsening between 2019 and 2020 in most of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, we explain, the prevalence of undernourishment (state of energy deprivation measured over more than one year) continued to increase in 2021 in most sub-regions, but at a slower pace”. Howevercompared to 2019, the largest increase in terms of percentage and number of people is observed on the African continent where one in five people is affected by hunger.
Furthermore, in 2020, some 3.1 billion people worldwide were unable to afford a healthy diet due to the rising cost of living. “This figure, which is 112 million higher than in 2019, is explained by the inflation in consumer prices of food products caused by the economic repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it. says the FAO report. The African continent alone had more than a billion people, nearly 80% of its population, who do not have access to healthy food. The cost of the latter is estimated at 3.46 US dollars (3.43 euros) per day and per individual.
“It is noted with great concern that the level of hunger on the planet has skyrocketed since 2019”, reacted Guillaume Compain, agriculture and food security campaigner at Oxfam France, following the publication of the report on July 6. “What is most shocking in this situation is that the main cause is not so much a global production deficit as a deeply unequal and unbalanced global food system, which makes access to food very difficult or even impossible for the most vulnerable populations. “, he pointed out.