Rome, Italy · 11 September 2018 — The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and four partner UN agencies confirmed in September 2018 that global hunger was on the rise for the third consecutive year, reversing more than a decade of steady decline. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2018 report revealed that 821 million people — approximately one in nine of the world's population — were undernourished in 2017. Africa remained the continent with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, affecting nearly 21% of its population, or over 256 million people. The report identified conflict, climate variability, and economic slowdowns as the primary drivers of the deterioration.
A Reversal of Historic Proportions
For more than a decade before 2015, the global trend in hunger had been downward. The proportion of undernourished people in the developing world fell from 23.3% in 1990–1992 to 12.9% in 2014–2016, a period of progress that fuelled optimism about achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger (SDG 2) by 2030. The 2018 SOFI report confirmed that this progress had not merely stalled — it had reversed.
The number of undernourished people rose from 784 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, and then to 821 million in 2017. While the absolute increase was distributed across multiple regions, the upward trend was most pronounced in Africa, where hunger was rising in almost all subregions.
The Three Drivers
The SOFI 2018 report, jointly produced by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, identified three interconnected drivers behind the reversal:
1. Conflict and Insecurity
Armed conflict remained the single most powerful driver of food insecurity. The report noted that the majority of the world's undernourished people — 489 million — lived in countries affected by conflict. In Africa, countries experiencing prolonged armed conflict, including South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, had some of the highest levels of acute food insecurity. Conflict disrupts agricultural production, displaces farming populations, destroys infrastructure, and blocks humanitarian access, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of hunger and instability.
2. Climate Variability and Extremes
The period 2015–2017 saw an unusual concentration of climate-related shocks, including the El Niño of 2015–2016, which triggered droughts and floods across East and Southern Africa, and a series of cyclones and severe weather events in other regions. The report highlighted that climate variability and extremes were not merely occasional disruptions but increasingly persistent features of the food security landscape, undermining agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods.
Drought was particularly devastating in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, where pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities faced successive failed rainy seasons. In Southern Africa, the El Niño-induced drought of 2015–2016 reduced cereal production by an estimated 9.6% compared to the previous five-year average, with Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Madagascar among the worst affected.
3. Economic Slowdowns
The 2018 report also drew attention to the role of economic factors. Several middle-income countries experiencing economic slowdowns or downturns saw increases in food insecurity, even in the absence of conflict or major climate shocks. Falling commodity prices, particularly for oil and minerals, reduced government revenues and household incomes, limiting access to food even when it was available in markets. This finding would be further elaborated in the 2019 SOFI report, which focused specifically on the link between economic slowdowns and food insecurity.
| Driver | Key Finding |
|---|---|
| Conflict | 489 million undernourished live in conflict-affected countries |
| Climate extremes | El Niño 2015–16 caused droughts across East and Southern Africa |
| Economic slowdowns | Commodity price falls reduced food access in middle-income countries |
The African Picture
The Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, published alongside the global SOFI report, provided granular detail on the continent's food security situation. It confirmed that while some African countries were making progress toward reducing malnutrition, the pace was far too slow to meet the 2030 SDG targets.
The report noted significant regional variation:
- East Africa had the highest prevalence of undernourishment, at nearly 31% of the population, driven by conflict in South Sudan and Somalia, drought across the Horn of Africa, and the Fall Armyworm invasion affecting maize production.
- West Africa had a lower prevalence of around 19%, but with significant variation between the Sahel and coastal countries. The Sahel region faced recurrent food crises linked to climate variability and insecurity.
- Southern Africa saw a deterioration following the El Niño drought, with several countries requiring emergency food assistance.
- Central Africa remained severely affected by the protracted crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where over 7 million people were estimated to face acute food insecurity.
- North Africa had the lowest prevalence of undernourishment, but faced challenges related to water scarcity and import dependence.
Beyond Calories: The Burden of Malnutrition
The SOFI report also tracked other forms of malnutrition, painting a picture of a triple burden: undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight/obesity.
- Stunting (low height for age) affected 151 million children under five globally, with Africa being the only continent where the number of stunted children was increasing — from 50.6 million in 2000 to 58.7 million in 2017.
- Wasting (low weight for height) affected 50 million children under five, with the highest prevalence in Central and Southern Africa.
- Overweight and obesity among adults continued to rise globally, including in Africa, where the prevalence of overweight children under five had increased from 5.4 million in 2000 to 8.8 million in 2017.
The SDG 2 Challenge
The 2018 report was the first SOFI to be published after the adoption of the SDGs, and it served as an early warning that the world was off track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. The report's authors noted that if the trends observed in 2015–2017 continued, the number of undernourished people would not decline but could increase further, particularly in Africa.
The report called for accelerated action across multiple fronts:
- Peacebuilding and conflict resolution — addressing the root cause of food insecurity in conflict-affected countries
- Climate resilience — investing in adaptation, early warning systems, and resilient agricultural practices
- Economic diversification — reducing dependence on volatile commodity exports and strengthening rural economies
- Social protection — expanding safety nets to protect the most vulnerable from shocks
- Nutrition-sensitive agriculture — shifting focus from calorie production to diverse, nutrient-rich food systems
Implications for Policy
The report's findings had immediate policy resonance. At the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in September 2018, food security was a prominent theme, with several African leaders citing the SOFI data in calls for greater investment in agricultural development and climate adaptation. The African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework, which set a target of 10% of national budgets devoted to agriculture, remained largely unmet — only a handful of countries had achieved the target by 2018.
The report also reinforced the case for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which was being negotiated during this period, as a mechanism for improving food availability through intra-African trade. The argument was that regional trade could buffer against localised production shocks, reduce dependence on food imports, and stabilise prices across the continent.
The 2018 SOFI report's most enduring contribution may have been its reframing of hunger not as a problem of production — global food production was sufficient to feed the world's population — but as a problem of access, stability, and utilisation, driven by political, economic, and environmental factors that lay largely outside the agricultural sector. This framing would shape food security discourse and policy in the years that followed, including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on food systems in 2020 and beyond.
Sources:
- FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018: Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition (September 2018)
- FAO, Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition (2018)
- UNECA, SOFI in Brief: Africa Regional Overview (2018)
- FAO, The Impact of Disasters and Crises on Agriculture and Food Security (2018)
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Institutional Research Desk · Foresight Institute of Research and Translation
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