This is one of the UN’s goals for sustainable development: to eradicate world hunger by 2030. It will not be achieved. It is now a security. According to the UN, malnutrition and hunger, largely driven by the pandemic and economic crisis, increased further in 2020. Chronic hunger now affects almost 10% of the world’s population. Asia is the first to be affected, but the trend is particularly worrying in Africa.
as reported from Geneva, Jeremiah Lanche
Of the 811 million malnourished 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 growing fastest.
Hunger is growing in Africa twice as fast on average compared to other regions. The reason is the connection between the economic crisis and the conflicts and climate disasters that have ravaged crops in recent years. According to the report, one in five Africans does not get enough food today. A discovery that angered the head of the World Food Program, David Beasley.
“With all the money raised by some during the pandemic, the simple fact that we have to […] begging for the fight against hunger is a sin. I’m very happy that the private sector can send rockets into space … But damn, we have a crisis here on earth … While we’re talking children are starving every day, 3 million people died of Covid last year, 9 million died of hunger … and it could be two or three times more this year if we do not act, he warns.
But even if it was brought under control, the pandemic will be weighed against the fight against hunger for many years. By 2030, of the 660 million people still affected, 30 million will be directly affected by the long-term effects of the current crisis, much of it in Africa. Africa could then drive across Asia to become the continent with the most malnourished people in the world.
We are going in the wrong direction. 811 million people went to bed hungry in 2020 – an increase of 161 million compared to 2019. This does not include the 270 million people facing crisis levels of hunger – up by 135 million before Covid.
Do the math: Almost 1 million people PER DAY were starving. # SOFI2021
– David Beasley (@WFPChief) July 12, 2021
Also read: Starvation multiplied by six since the pandemic
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