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Add to Preferred SourcesGlobal hunger fell for a third consecutive year in 2025, though improvements remain fragile, uneven, and insufficient to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to a press release issued by five United Nations specialized agencies in Rome on 21 July 2026. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) was jointly released by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP), and World Health Organization (WHO). The report estimates that 7.8 percent of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022. Roughly 645 million people were affected by hunger in 2025, nearly 14 million fewer than in 2024. Despite this progress, one-third of the global population still cannot afford a healthy diet.
The recovery remains uneven across regions, with Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean recording steady improvements. Africa is now home to approximately 309 million hungry people, compared with 292 million in Asia. The share of Africa’s population facing hunger declined from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025. In 2025, an estimated 25.8 percent of the global population, or around 2.1 billion people, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. That figure is down from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020, though still above pre-pandemic levels.
Regional disparities remain stark, with more than half of Africa’s population (56.6 percent) facing moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. This compares to 20.3 percent in Asia, 22.9 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7 percent in Northern America and Europe. Food insecurity continues to be more prevalent in rural areas, and women remain disproportionately affected, though the gender gap narrowed slightly in 2025. The report also projects that 510 to 520 million people may still face hunger in 2030 due to the Middle East conflict’s impact on food inflation. The joint authors warn that conflict, weather extremes, and reductions in official development assistance threaten hard-won gains.
The average global cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day in 2025, up from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021. The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet declined from 2.97 billion in 2021 to 2.69 billion in 2025. In Africa, however, 66.6 percent of the population could not afford a healthy diet in 2025.
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu stated: “The report shows that progress is possible, but we must move faster. Ending hunger and making healthy diets affordable requires political commitment, sustained investment and enabling policies.”
The report highlights that global progress on maternal and child nutrition remains insufficient to meet the 2030 targets. Adult obesity rose steadily from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024, while 150 million children under five years of age remain stunted. Only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimally diverse diet. Reducing the cost of a healthy diet will require context-specific policy responses, investments in infrastructure, and reforms across agrifood value chains. As the report concludes, “a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building.”