UN annual report: Africa is the continent with the fastest growing hunger
Chronic hunger now affects nearly 10% of the world's population, according to the UN annual report.
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3 min
This is one of the Sustainable Development goals promoted by the UN: to eradicate hunger in the world by 2030. It will not be achieved.
It is now a certainty.
According to the United Nations, malnutrition and hunger, largely fueled by the pandemic and the economic crisis, increased further in 2020. Chronic hunger now affects nearly 10% of the world's population.
Asia is the first concerned, but the trend is particularly worrying in Africa.
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With our correspondent in Geneva
,
Jérémie Lanche
Of the 811 million undernourished people, almost a third live in Africa.
The African continent is the second most affected, after Asia, but it is the one where hunger is increasing the fastest.
Hunger is growing in Africa twice as fast on average compared to other regions. At issue is the conjunction of the economic crisis with the conflicts and climatic disasters that have ravaged crops in recent years. According to the report, one in five Africans are not getting enough food today. A finding that angered the boss of the World Food Program, David Beasley.
"
With all the money that was raised by some during the pandemic, the mere fact that we [...] have to beg to fight against hunger is a shame. I'm very happy that the private sector can send rockets into space ... But damn it, we have a crisis here on Earth ... While we talk, children are starving every day, 3 million people died of Covid last year, 9 million died of hunger… and it could be 2 or 3 times more this year if we do not act
”, he warns.
But even if it were controlled, the pandemic will still weigh on the fight against hunger for many years.
In 2030, of the 660 million people who will still be affected, 30 million will be directly because of the long-term effects of the current crisis, much of which in Africa.
Africa could then overtake Asia, to become the continent with the most undernourished people in the world.
We're heading in the wrong direction.
811M people went to bed hungry in 2020 — an increase of 161M from 2019. This doesn't include the 270M people facing crisis levels of hunger — up by 135M pre-Covid.
Do the math: That's nearly 1M people PER DAY who slipped into hunger.
# SOFI2021
- David Beasley (@WFPChief) July 12, 2021
Read also: Famine multiplied by six since the pandemic
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