The UN's 2024 edition of “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” (SOFI) report was released July 25 and included many alarming findings. According to report between "713 and 757 million people may have faced hunger in 2023 – one out of 11 people in the world, and one out of every five in Africa" and the "world is still far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, Zero Hunger, with the global prevalence of undernourishment persisting at nearly the same level for three consecutive years after having risen sharply in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic". That goal was to be achieved by 2030. In fact, "it is projected that 582 million people will be chronically undernourished at the end of the decade, more than half of them in Africa."
Focusing "on economic access to nutritious foods, updated and improved estimates show that more than one-third of people in the world – about 2.8 billion – could not afford a healthy diet in 2022." Unsurprisingly, low-income countries have the largest percentage of the population that is unable to do so at a staggering 71.5 percent.
Eric Munoz, Oxfam’s food policy expert, responded to the report by saying "Global hunger remains stuck at shamefully high levels, driven by many reasons that together become convenient excuses for our governments to avoid decisive action. We grow enough food to feed people everywhere in the world and there are solutions to eradicate this terrible scourge." Further the "world’s poorest people are paying the highest price of hunger. We need deeper, structural policy and social change to address all of the drivers of hunger, including economic injustice, climate change and conflict."
In a press release he noted that:
Countries facing high levels of hunger tend to be poor, highly-indebted, even exploited. They are also the most vulnerable to climate-related and economic shocks. Nearly 28 million people in East Africa are severely hungry because of worsening floods and droughts, conflict and poverty, while Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan struggle under a debt burden of $65 billion. They also need $7.49 billion in humanitarian assistance, but donors have to date met less than 20 percent of this. They are being short-changed at every turn.
The UN today identifies a hole of trillions of dollars needed to end hunger. Only bold political action can fill this gap. Private financing can be a partial solution, but runs the risk of increasing inequalities and sidelining local communities. More public funding is required especially into smallholder farmers in poorer countries and stronger social protection schemes, wide-scale debt relief, and for rich countries to meet their humanitarian and climate finance pledges.
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