NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and trends

The indicators of cost and affordability of a healthy diet consider retail food prices and income distributions which provide evidence about people’s economic access to the lowest-cost healthy diet. Continued monitoring of these indicators will remain important considering recent global shocks threatening food security (FAO, 2023c).

The cost of a healthy diet in the Arab States was 3.55 (purchasing power parity) PPP dollars per person per day in 2021, slightly lower than the global average of 3.66 PPP dollars per person per day (Table 14). Since 2017, the cost of a healthy diet in the Arab States increased annually, with a 2.5 percent increase between 2020 and 2021 (Table 14 and Figure 24). The highest increase was in high-income countries (6.4 percent), followed by lower-middle-income countries (4.4 percent), and upper-middle-income countries (3.5 percent).

In 2021, 43.8 percent of the region’s population or 141.6 million people, could not afford a healthy diet. This is slightly higher than the global average of 42.2 percent. Lower-middle-income countries account for 66 percent of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the Arab States.

Within subregions, in Arab LDCs 82.9 percent of the population was unable to afford a healthy diet; nearly twice that of lower-middle-income countries (44 percent), and more than five times that of upper middle-income countries (16.1 percent).

As shown in Figure 25 and Table 15, between 2020 and 2021, despite the increase in cost, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the Arab States decreased by 3.8 million people. This reduction more than offset the increase in unaffordability that occurred between 2019 and 2020 (2.8 million more people unable to afford), following the COVID-19 pandemic. This pattern was mainly driven by Arab States LDCs where unaffordability increased by 1.5 million people from 2019 to 2020 but declined by 2.7 million people from 2020 to 2021. The largest decreases between 2020 and 2021 was observed in Conflict countries, with a reduction of 3 million people unable to afford a healthy diet. This decrease compensated the increase in unaffordability occurred between 2019 and 2020. The Sudan contributed to this decrease with 2.8 fewer million people unable to afford a healthy diet (Table 28).

Despite this improvement, 4.1 million more people were unable to afford a healthy diet in the Arab States compared to 2017. The highest increase in the population unable to afford a healthy diet occurred between 2017 and 2018 (by 5.8 million people), and between 2019 and 2020 (by 2.8 million people). Between 2018 and 2019, the decrease of 0.7 million people unable to afford this diet was driven by lower-middle-income countries, while Arab States LDCs and Conflict countries registered increases in unaffordability (Table 15).

The percentage of the population that cannot afford a healthy diet differs greatly between countries and within subregions (Figure 26). Considering lower-middle-income countries in 2021, more than 50 percent of the population could not afford a healthy diet in Djibouti (65.3 percent), Egypt (61.6 percent), and Mauritania (62.4 percent), while in the Arab LDCs the highest level of unaffordability was registered in Sudan (85.4 percent) (Table 28). Nevertheless, 20 percent or less of the population was unable to afford a healthy diet in other lower-middle-income countries like in Morocco (17.7 percent), Palestine (20 percent) and Tunisia (18 percent). The countries with the lowest percentage of the population unable to afford a healthy diet were the United Arab Emirates (0.1 percent) and Jordan (7.1 percent).