Global food insecurity is rapidly increasing. In 2021 an estimated 29.3 per  cent of the global population (2.3 billion people) was moderately or severely  food insecure while 828 million people in the world (10.5 per cent of the  world population) faced hunger.1 There are significant regional disparities  and Africa bears the heaviest burden. In 2021, a total of 20.2 per cent of the  African population was facing hunger, compared to 9.1 per cent in Asia,  8.6 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5.8 per cent in Oceania and  less than 2.5 per cent in North America and Europe.2 Current projections  indicate that the situation will worsen in the coming years. The key drivers of  the increasing levels of food insecurity are violent conflict, climate change,  the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

This paper provides an overview of the impact of these four drivers on food  security in Africa. Africa is host to a large proportion of the world’s armed  conflicts and exceptionally exposed to climate change compared to other  regions. Since 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed around 40 million  African people into extreme poverty.3 The pandemic, coupled with the food  and commodity price inflation triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in  February 2022, has generated the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation,  hitting people living in or near poverty the hardest. This multidimensional  crisis poses significant challenges to governments and other actors responding to the crisis. Considerable disparities exist across the continent and the  paper maps how these drivers play out across four African subregions. Nine  key recommendations are made on action to build resilience and contribute  to the prospects for peace, which is an essential precondition for reducing  hunger.