A report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization released on Tuesday warns that the food security situation in Africa is most alarming, accounting for the highest rates of hunger in the world.
The annual report says hunger is continuing to slowly but steadily rising in almost all sub-regions in the continent.
According to the report, the pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow, reads the 2019 reads the 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report jointly produced by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and four other UN agencies.
It says that the situation is most alarming in Africa.
In Eastern Africa in particular, close to a third of the population (30.8 percent) is undernourished, the report adds.
In addition to climate and conflict, economic slowdowns and downturns are driving the rise, heads of five UN agencies warn in their joint foreword to the report.
Other findings show that Asia and Africa are also home to nearly three-quarters of all overweight children worldwide, largely driven by consumption of unhealthy diets, it says.
This year’s report introduced for the first time a new indicator for measuring food insecurity at different levels of severity and monitoring progress towards SDG 2: the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity.
This indicator is based on data obtained directly from people in surveys about their access to food in the last 12 months, using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), it points out.
Latest official statistics released in the report indicate that the number of hungry people in the world in 2018 stood at 821.6 million with Africa representing 256 million.
CU/as/APA