Africa has for the first time become the continent with the largest number of people facing hunger, a UN report said yesterday, as a growing number of Africans have faced undernourishment.

The UN’s annual report on food security and nutrition found that there has been gradual improvement towards reducing hunger overall in recent years, but that progress has been uneven.

“The centre of gravity of hunger has shifted from Asia to Africa,” said David Laborde, director of the agrifood economics division at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Twenty-five years ago China still had a problem with hunger but they solved them; India also has a problem but they are putting lots of effort into actively resolving it,” he told AFP.

The report, put together by the FAO and four other UN agencies, estimated that hunger affected 309 million people in Africa last year, or 20 percent of the population.

It was followed by Asia, where 292 million people were touched by hunger, or six percent of the population.

Overall the proportion of the world population facing hunger decreased has decreased from 8.6 percent in 2022 to 7.8 percent in 2025, UN agencies estimate.

While that represents a drop in 43 million people to 645 million, the agencies noted that is still higher than before the Covid pandemic. The prevalence of undernourishment has also been on the rise in Africa since 2017, although the UN agencies said the most recent estimates point to signs of a turnaround in 2025.

Meanwhile the percentage of people who cannot afford a healthy diet has increased in Africa since 2021, while it has decreased in other regions of the world.

Two-thirds of Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, more than double the level in Asia.