AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and Trends

1.1 PREVALENCE OF UNDERNOURISHMENT

The prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is derived from official country data on food supply, food consumption and energy needs in the population, considering demographic characteristics such as age, sex and levels of physical activity. Designed to capture a state of chronic energy deprivation, it does not reflect the short-lived effects of temporary crises or a temporarily inadequate intake of essential nutrients. FAO always strives to improve the accuracy of the PoU estimates by taking into account new information; the entire historical series is updated for each report. For this reason, only the current series of estimates should be used, including for values in past years.

After a decade of improvement between 2000 and 2010, the burden of hunger, as measured by the PoU, continued to worsen significantly in Africa (FIGURE 1). In 2022, 19.7 percent of the population was undernourished, an increase of 4.6 percentage points since 2010. The highest inter-annual increase in the PoU occurred between 2019 and 2020 corresponding to the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic.

In 2022, the prevalence of undernourishment ranged from 7.5 percent in Northern Africa to 11 percent in Southern Africa, 15 percent in Western Africa and about 29 percent in both Central and Eastern Africa (FIGURE 2).

The worsening hunger situation that occurred in all subregions during the first year of the COVID 19 pandemic continued into 2022, and compared to the pre-COVID 19 figures, Central Africa recorded the highest prevalence of undernourishment increase of 4.3 percentage points, followed by Western Africa with 3.6 percentage points, Southern Africa with 2.8 percentage points, and Eastern Africa and Northern Africa with 1.8 and 1.7 percentage points increase, respectively.

Nevertheless, the first pandemic year seemed to have been harsher than the following ones in terms of hunger effects. In all subregions except Northern Africa and Southern Africa, there were smaller increases in hunger from 2021 to 2022 compared to the previous year. The worst impact of the pandemic on hunger was observed in Central Africa and Western Africa subregions, with an increase of 2.8 percentage points and 2.7 percentage points respectively in 2020. The PoU changes remained below or near 1 percentage point in 2021 and 2022 in all subregions (TABLE 1).

Africa was home to 282 million hungry people in 2022, representing more than 38 percent of the estimated 735 million people that faced hunger globally. With 134.6 million, Eastern Africa had the largest number of undernourished, compared to 62.8 million in Western Africa, 57 million in Central Africa, 19.5 million in Northern Africa, and 7.6 million in Southern Africa (TABLE 2).

Since the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic, an additional 57 million people in Africa were affected by hunger. All the subregions registered an increase in the number of undernourished. Of the total increase of 57 million people since 2019, Western Africa accounted for 34 percent, Eastern Africa 31 percent, Central Africa 22 percent, Northern Africa 9 percent, and Southern Africa only 4 percent.

At country level and based on the estimated average values for the 2020–2022 period, undernourishment affected 10 percent or less of the population in 14 countries in Africa; it affected at least one-third of the population in 9 countries, including Central African Republic, Lesotho, Madagascar and Somalia, where the prevalence exceeded 45 percent (FIGURE 4).

The majority of African countries registered a prevalence of undernourishment in 2020–2022 above the pre-pandemic levels. Only in Algeria was the prevalence of undernourishment below 2.5 percent for several consecutive years. In 21 other countries, undernourishment remained the same or declined slightly compared to the pre-pandemic level in 2018–2020 (TABLE 16). In terms of numbers, the undernourished population increased between 2018–2020 and 2020–2022 in the majority of countries while it remained unchanged in 15 countries (TABLE 17).