Rio de Janeiro, Brazil · 24 July 2024 — Five United Nations agencies confirmed that approximately 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged for three consecutive years and now stands roughly 152 million higher than pre-pandemic levels recorded in 2019.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI), jointly produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO), was officially launched on 24 July 2024 at the G20 Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty Task Force Ministerial Meeting in Rio de Janeiro. The report's theme — "Financing to end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition" — framed the findings around a central question: why has the world failed to reverse the hunger spike that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict disruptions, and climate shocks?
The Numbers Behind the Stagnation
The report's headline figure of 733 million undernourished people represents the mid-range of a statistical range spanning 713 to 757 million. Translated into population-level terms, this means roughly one in eleven people globally and one in five people in Africa cannot access sufficient calories on a regular basis.
The regional breakdown reveals a diverging trajectory. While Latin America saw measurable progress in reducing hunger, the percentage of the population facing undernourishment continued to climb in Africa, reaching 20.4 per cent. Western Asia and the Caribbean also registered increases.
| Region | Prevalence of Undernourishment (2023) | Trend vs. 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | 20.4% | Rising |
| Asia | 8.1% | Stable/slight decline |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 6.2% | Declining |
| Oceania | 7.3% | Stable |
| World | 9.1% | Stalled |
A Financing Gap at the Heart of the Problem
The 2024 report broke new ground by quantifying the financing shortfall. The UN agencies estimated that an additional $77 billion per year is needed through 2030 to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries. The report argued that current levels of both domestic and international financing fall dramatically short, and that the fragmentation of funding streams — split across humanitarian, development, and climate finance — undermines coherent action.
The report noted that many countries facing the worst food crises are also burdened by high debt servicing costs, leaving limited fiscal space for agricultural investment, social protection, or nutrition programmes. The FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, emphasised that the report's findings should serve as a wake-up call for G20 leaders to mobilise predictable, sustained financing rather than relying on emergency appeals after crises have already escalated.
Conflict, Climate, and Economic Shocks
The report identified three converging drivers that have kept hunger entrenched since 2019:
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Conflict and insecurity — ongoing armed conflicts in multiple regions disrupted food production, displaced farming populations, and severed supply chains. The report noted that conflict remains the single largest driver of acute food insecurity in countries experiencing humanitarian crises.
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Climate extremes — repeated droughts, floods, and El Niño/La Niña cycles devastated harvests across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and parts of Central America. The 2023–2024 El Niño event was particularly destructive in Southern Africa, where six nations declared states of disaster.
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Economic slowdowns and downturns — persistently high food prices, currency depreciations, and the lingering economic effects of the pandemic eroded household purchasing power in import-dependent countries.
Malnutrition Beyond Calories
The report also tracked the multiple burdens of malnutrition. Stunting affected approximately 148 million children under five globally in 2022, while wasting threatened the lives of 45 million children. Although exclusive breastfeeding rates improved to 48 per cent, progress on reducing low birthweight and childhood anaemia remained far too slow to meet 2030 World Health Assembly targets.
Adult obesity continued its upward trajectory, with an estimated 2.5 billion adults overweight in 2022, including 890 million living with obesity. The coexistence of undernutrition and obesity within the same communities and even households — the so-called "double burden of malnutrition" — was documented in 35 countries, underscoring that food insecurity is not only about quantity but about the quality and diversity of diets.
The G20 Context and Political Momentum
The choice of Rio de Janeiro as the launch venue was deliberate. Brazil's G20 presidency had established the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty as a flagship initiative, aiming to mobilise political and financial commitments from the world's largest economies. The SOFI report's findings were intended to provide the evidentiary backbone for the alliance's launch later in 2024.
Looking Ahead
The SOFI 2024 report acknowledged that while the overall global hunger figure has plateaued, this masks significant movement underneath. Some regions are improving, demonstrating that progress is possible with the right combination of political commitment, social protection, agricultural investment, and conflict resolution. The challenge, as the five UN agencies framed it, is scaling those successes rapidly enough to outpace the accelerating climate and economic headwinds.
The report called on governments, international financial institutions, and private sector actors to:
- Increase and better target financing for food security and nutrition
- Strengthen social protection systems to reach the most vulnerable
- Invest in climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems
- Address the debt burden that constrains fiscal space in food-crisis countries
- Improve data collection and early warning systems to enable anticipatory action
Sources
- FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 — Financing to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms. Rome, FAO. Published 24 July 2024.
- FAO Newsroom. "Upcoming UN hunger report presents a new approach to financing the end of food insecurity and malnutrition." 15 July 2024.
- UN Media. UNifeed coverage of SOFI 2024 launch event, Rio de Janeiro, 24 July 2024.
- WFP. Global Report on Food Crises 2024. Rome, 2024.
- UNICEF. Press statement on SOFI 2024 findings. July 2024.
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Institutional Research Desk · Foresight Institute of Research and Translation
The collective editorial and research translation board of FIRAT, synthesising peer-reviewed evidence, policy briefs, and division milestones across our seven foundational research pillars.
