Food Securing Pathways: Balancing Progress and Rising Inequalities

    The global struggle against hunger has reached a pivotal moment. For the first time since 2019, progress has been recorded: between 638 and 720 million people faced hunger in 2024, representing 8.2% of the global population—a slight decrease from 8.5% in 2023 and 8.7% in 2022. This decline is welcome, yet progress is uneven. Gains have been made in Southern Asia, Southeastern Asia, and South America, while hunger remains critically high in Africa, affecting more than one-fifth of the population, and continues to rise in Western Asia, where it reached 12.7% in 2024. Projections indicate that by 2030, 512 million people will still be chronically undernourished, underscoring the difficulty of achieving SDG 2 on zero hunger (UNICEF, 2025).

    Beyond headline figures, systemic challenges remain daunting. In 2024, nearly 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure, and more than 2.6 billion could not afford a healthy diet. Nutrition outcomes reveal mixed trends: Child stunting declined to 23.2% in 2024, down from 26.4% in 2012, and exclusive breastfeeding rose to 47.8% in 2023 (UNICEF 2025). However, child obesity remains largely unchanged. Meanwhile, adult obesity is rising, affecting 15.8% of the global population, and anemia among women of reproductive age has increased to 30.7% (Yuan et al., 2024). The introduction of minimum dietary diversity as a global indicator in 2025 highlights that only one-third of children and two-thirds of women achieve adequate dietary quality (Aboagye, et al. 2021).

    Economic pressures amplify these challenges. Global food inflation surged from 2.3% in late 2020 to 13.6% by early 2023, eroding affordability and forcing households to shift toward cheaper, less nutritious foods. These trends underscore the vulnerability of food systems to external shocks, such as climate change, market volatility, and geopolitical disruptions (Anderl and Caporale, 2025).

    Taken together, the 2025 hunger report conveys both optimism and warning. Encouraging stunting reductions and breastfeeding improvements demonstrate that targeted, evidence-based policies can yield measurable gains. However, the persistence of hunger in Africa, the growing prevalence of obesity and anemia, and widespread dietary inadequacy indicate that systemic barriers remain unresolved (Otekunrin, 2024; Njangang, 2024).

    Moving forward, three priorities stand out. First, fiscal and trade policies that stabilize food prices and protect vulnerable households must address affordability (Whulanza et al., 2025a). Second, nutrition policies must tackle the double burden of malnutrition and address both undernutrition and rising obesity through integrated strategies (Taqdissillah et al, 2025). Finally, with investments in sustainable agriculture, regional supply chains, and climate adaptation, resilience must underpin food security efforts (Whulanza et al., 2025b). The future of food security depends on whether nations can transform recent incremental progress into sustained, equitable outcomes. Without urgent and coordinated action, the vision of ending hunger by 2030 will remain beyond reach.

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