Under a corrugated iron roof in a Lagos market, Iyabo Samson, a corn seller, turns a dried cob over a small charcoal fire. She has not eaten since morning. A bag and a half of maize that once cost her 300 naira from farmers now costs 5,000. To break even on a single sack, she says, she would need to sell roasted ears for 800 naira apiece, a sum her customers simply do not have. A few stalls away, Modinat Olayiwola, who sells bread, watches customers haggle over a 500-naira loaf before settling for a smaller one at 300 naira, because, as she puts it, “a half loaf is better than none.” These are not isolated hardships; they are the daily arithmetic of survival for millions of Africans who, according to a new United Nations report, can no longer afford to eat a healthy diet.

Samson and Olayiwola are among the 66.6 percent of the continent’s population that the report, compiled by five UN agencies, finds unable to afford a diverse diet that meets basic energy and nutrient needs. The cost of such a diet is calculated at 4.28 purchasing power parity dollars a day—well above the extreme poverty line of 3 PPP dollars. In Nigeria, where the naira has weakened and fuel subsidy removals have pushed transport costs higher, that figure translates into a daily struggle for traders whose goods spoil before they can be sold. “Patronage is not encouraging,” says Omolara Oladimeji, a pepper seller, noting that a basket of tomatoes has doubled in price. The market women’s voices, gathered by local reporters, give texture to a statistic that the UN’s chief economist, Maximo Torero, calls “extremely high.”

For the first time, Africa has overtaken Asia as the continent with the largest absolute number of hungry people: 309 million, or one in five Africans, compared with 292 million in Asia. The shift is partly demographic—Africa’s population is growing faster—but it also reflects a divergence in policy and investment. Analysts in Rome, where the Food and Agriculture Organization is headquartered, point to Asia’s sustained progress, particularly in India and China, where targeted welfare programmes and agricultural productivity gains have pushed hunger rates below 10 percent. In Africa, by contrast, the prevalence of undernourishment had been rising since 2017, though the 2025 data show tentative signs of stabilisation. David Laborde, director of the FAO’s agrifood economics division, describes a “centre of gravity of hunger” that has moved decisively away from Asia. The report notes that two-thirds of Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, more than double the level in Asia or Latin America.

The global picture is not uniformly bleak. Hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, to 7.8 percent of the world’s population, down from 8.6 percent in 2022. Yet the improvement is fragile. The report warns that shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, linked to the Middle East conflict, are already raising fuel and fertiliser costs, and a potentially strong El Niño weather pattern could disrupt harvests in vulnerable regions. Torero cautions that the war in Gaza has not yet altered the chronic hunger figures, but the destruction of agricultural infrastructure there will take years to rebuild. In African cities, the consequences of these layered crises are felt in the informal economy, where women like Samson sell roasted corn on credit because “money is scarce,” and where, as one bread seller observes, a 500-naira loaf has become a luxury item.

At the close of the market day, Samson wraps unsold ears in a cloth. The charcoal embers die down. The UN report projects that, depending on the duration of the Middle East crisis, between 510 and 520 million people could still face hunger in 2030—a reduction of only 20 percent from today’s levels. In the meantime, the women of Lagos will return to their stalls, recalculating the impossible sums that separate a family from a meal that is both filling and nourishing.