According to Máximo Torero, Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO of the United Nations, last year, across Africa, the number of people who were uncertain about their ability to obtain adequate food or were forced to reduce the quality and quantity of what they ate declined.
For the first time in ten years, food insecurity improved across the continent. The share of the population suffering from hunger fell for the first time in nearly a decade, from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity dropped from 58.5 to 56.6 percent, representing 8.6 million fewer people. The prevalence of severe food insecurity also declined. Cases of child stunting are decreasing. Hunger, which had been rising across the continent since 2017, now appears to have stopped spreading.
This change, although modest, could mark a genuine turning point. After a decade of worsening conditions, Africa has shown that the architecture underpinning food security can work. To preserve these gains, however, a second shift will be needed: moving beyond simply reducing hunger to making nutritious diets affordable for everyone.
Investments in institutions, infrastructure, and markets, as well as budgetary choices, influence food prices long before food reaches households. Over the past twenty years, a small group of African countries has put in place the building blocks of this architecture: agricultural research and extension services, veterinary networks, rural roads and market connections, and statistical agencies that measure deprivation through household surveys.
These achievements have come even as it has become increasingly difficult to rely on external financing. Aid remains essential, particularly in conflict-affected countries, where it enables people to survive. However, in today’s context, national capacity, smarter public spending, and resilient supply chains have become even more important.
How governments now use these tools to reduce the cost of a healthy diet will determine whether 2025 marks the beginning of a new era of lasting progress or remains only a brief improvement.
Africa continues to face a greater food security challenge than any other region. The continent is home to 309 million people suffering from hunger—more than any other region in the world—and by 2030 it is expected to account for 56 percent of all people worldwide who will still be experiencing hunger.
Two out of every three Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, and this proportion continues to rise even as it declines in other parts of the world. Yet these recent gains are built on long-term national achievements. Over the past two decades, Senegal has reduced the share of its population suffering from hunger from 15.8 to 5.3 percent.
In Togo, the figure fell from 24.6 to 10.2 percent; in Ghana, from 11.1 to 6.4 percent; in Côte d’Ivoire, from 17.6 to 11.4 percent; in Rwanda, from 31.8 to 22.6 percent; and in Mozambique, from 29.2 to 22.3 percent. All of these countries stayed the course despite food price crises and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Progress on this scale is the result of public policy, not weather conditions.
Making healthy diets affordable will be more difficult than reducing hunger. The challenge lies in the cost of foods that make up a healthy diet—not just one that satisfies hunger—such as milk, eggs, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, and legumes.
Animal-source foods are the most expensive food group in Africa, and 69 percent of African countries rank among the highest-cost third worldwide for this category, while staple starches account for only a relatively small share of the total cost of a healthy diet. These prices are shaped at every stage of the supply chain by livestock diseases, inadequate cold chains, poor road networks, high energy costs, and underdeveloped local markets, long before products reach store shelves. The prices of staple foods have continued to decline, while the cost of many of the most important nutritious foods has remained stubbornly high.
African governments can finance much of this transition by redirecting subsidies they already provide. Across Africa, a general 10 percent production subsidy reduces the cost of a healthy diet by only about 4 percent—roughly half the impact of the same spending in Latin America. The issue, therefore, is less about the size of these budgets than about how they are allocated. If subsidies are redirected toward animal health, breeding and aquaculture, cold chains, rural roads, lower-cost energy, and research on the fruits, vegetables, and legumes that are essential for healthy diets, the cost structure that keeps healthy food out of reach for two-thirds of Africans will begin to change.
African systems are not yet able to shoulder every aspect of this effort on their own. In countries trapped in acute food crises—the same conflict-affected states that weigh down continental averages—external assistance enables people to survive. The statistical services that made this year’s progress visible also depend on funding that is now under increasing pressure. The 2025 estimates describe conditions before this year’s funding cuts had fully taken effect; the consequences will be felt in 2026 and beyond.
One year of progress is not enough to establish a trend, but it does help clarify the task ahead. African governments have demonstrated what their systems can achieve despite significant challenges. That same capacity must now be directed toward reducing the cost of nutritious foods—the one indicator that continues to move in the wrong direction. The first improvement in a decade has been achieved. The challenge now is to make it last.
