Food Insecurity Rising in Africa, Falling in Latin America, Caribbean

There has been a modest global decline in hunger since 2022. While progress is seen in Asia and South America, hunger is rising in Africa and Western Asia. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report shows a modest global decline in hunger since 2022, with 673 million people facing hunger in 2024, indicating a decrease of 22 million compared to 2022. While progress is seen in Asia and South America, hunger is rising in Africa and Western Asia.

This progress is nonetheless undermined by persistent food price inflation, particularly in low-income countries that were hit hardest by rising food prices, threatening vulnerable populations. The report emphasizes the need for stable markets, open trade, and stronger policy coordination to secure healthy diets and reach the UN’s 2030 goals.

Isabel de la Peña, the country director for Cuba, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic for the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), spoke to IPS about the 2025 report and the agriculture sector, rural populations, food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and the complex interplay of milestones and setbacks.

“The Latin America and the Caribbean region has reduced the incidence of hunger and food insecurity over the past four consecutive years, and this is an important achievement. Hunger fell to 5.1 percent of the population in 2024, down from 6.1 percent in 2020,” she explained.

“And if you look at the past 20 years,” she continued, “hunger had been steadily declining in LAC from 2005 to 2019. Then it peaked in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, hunger has been steadily declining and now it’s below pre-pandemic levels. Also, if you look at food insecurity, globally, LAC has experienced the greatest reduction in the prevalence of food insecurity in recent years.”

In 2024, hunger affected about 307 million people in Africa, 323 million in Asia, and 34 million in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—20.2, 6.7, and 5.1 percent of the population, respectively. Food insecurity has remained consistently higher in rural areas than in urban areas since 2022, with notable improvements in urban areas in Asia and across urban, peri-urban, and rural areas in LAC.

Although the gender gap narrowed at the global level from 2021 to 2023, it increased slightly in 2024, with the prevalence of food insecurity remaining consistently higher among women than men, globally and across all regions. “LAC has the largest gender gap in the prevalence of food insecurity, as food insecurity among women is 5.3 percentage points higher than among men,” Peña said.

Further speaking about the paradox of food insecurity in rural areas where it is produced, she noted that food insecurity affects 28 percent in rural areas versus 23 percent in urban settings. IFAD invests in rural people to enable them to overcome poverty and achieve food security. Peña said approximately 33.6 million people suffer from hunger in LAC and that rural populations, rural areas, and women are still the furthest left behind.

“This is an unacceptable reality,” she continued. “LAC has enormous agricultural production potential, and it’s also a net exporter of food. Even though the number of people affected by food insecurity in this region fell by 9 million between 2023 and 2024, one in four people in the region is still affected by food insecurity.”

Globally, LAC has the highest cost of a healthy diet, and approximately 182 million people in LAC cannot afford a healthy diet. In designing sustainable solutions, she emphasized the need to be alive to the disparities in the region.

She said the Dominican Republic faces a significant double burden of malnutrition as undernutrition coexists with high rates of overweight and obesity, with over 63 percent of the adult population overweight or obese.

Cuba has traditionally maintained low levels of undernourishment, below 2.5 percent, and a low prevalence of stunting or chronic child malnutrition. Peña attributes the milestone to “universal social protection and food distribution systems. But in the last five years, there has been a drastic reduction in the production of staple foods, and also a decreased availability of resources to import food. Families are now receiving fewer state rations.”

“Guatemala is one of the countries in the region with the worst food security and nutrition situation, as one in two people are food insecure, and chronic child malnutrition or stunting affects 44.6 percent of children under five. This is the highest rate in the region and one of the highest in the world, and it’s even higher when we look at indigenous peoples and rural populations,” she said.

She cautioned that chronic child malnutrition or stunting has long-lasting consequences, as it can impair brain development, reduce school performance, productive capacity, and the ability to earn an income, ultimately limiting a child’s future contribution to the social and economic development of their country.

“The Dominican Republic is a success story in terms of reducing hunger, as prevalence has fallen below 3.6 percent. It used to be almost 22 percent 20 years ago. Still, 18 percent of the population is food insecure, and 23 percent cannot afford a healthy diet,” she emphasized.

All the same, agricultural challenges in the Dominican Republic include a lack of proper irrigation due to poorly maintained irrigation systems, blocked waterways, and declining groundwater levels. Further afield in the island nation of Cuba, there is an over-dependence on imports, as the country imports 60 to 70 percent of its food requirements.

Overall, she stated that climate change is an increasing threat, disrupting food systems, agricultural productivity, and supply chains, further exacerbating “food insecurity and malnutrition, as LAC is the second most exposed region in the world to climate change.”

“These extreme weather events and climate variability really reduce agricultural productivity. They affect yields, damage crops, and can also disrupt supply chains, leading to rising food prices and making healthy diets less accessible,” she said.

Further highlighting the urgent need to invest in climate change adaptation, she spoke of the droughts induced by La Niña between 2020 and 2023 in Argentina that resulted in a 35 percent drop in wheat production and a dramatic fall in exports, leading to international wheat price spikes as Argentina is a major wheat exporter.

Peña emphasised that this backdrop is particularly concerning for IFAD and heightens the need to work with “small-scale farmers and poor households, because those are the ones that are more vulnerable to high food prices. And poor households spend a larger share of their income on food, so they are more vulnerable to these fluctuations.”

She stressed that for small-scale producers, any rise in food prices outweighs the potential gains they can obtain from selling their produce. Overall, other prevailing challenges in LAC are linked to low agricultural productivity, limited access to financial services, low technology adoption, and the ageing of rural populations as the youth migrate to urban settings.

“We need to redouble our efforts and focus on investments in the populations that are being left behind, such as rural areas and women, and this is really at the core of what IFAD does in LAC. We have over 26 projects in the region with an investment of USD 2.5 billion between IFAD resources and co-financing,” she emphasised.

These projects aim to promote food and agricultural production and tackle climate change, with a special focus on rural populations, small-scale producers, women, and indigenous communities who are still the furthest left behind in the journey towards zero hunger.