Food insecurity trends in Africa are alarming, yet current financial flows are insufficient to bridge the significant funding gap and reach all communities in need. An interview with Gilbert Phiri from the IFRC.
Africa faces its most severe hunger crisis in decades. As of July 2025, over 282 million people, more than one in five, are affected, with entire regions pushed to the brink by climate shocks, economic instability, and conflict. From drought-stricken Southern Africa to famine-threatened communities in the East, the challenge is vast, but not insurmountable.
As Gilbert Phiri, senior coordinator for the Africa region Zero Hunger Initiative at IFRC, explains, ending hunger will take more than emergency aid. It will require durable, community-led solutions designed to withstand future crises and empower people to feed themselves for generations to come.
In this conversation, Gilbert shares the latest hunger trends across Africa, what makes a solution durable, and why community ownership is essential for scaling sustainable change.
Understanding the crisis
Q: What are the most critical hunger and malnutrition trends you’re seeing across Africa in 2025?
A: Africa’s hunger and malnutrition crisis is growing more acute in 2025, propelled by interlinked climate, economic, and conflict-related shocks. Without immediate and coordinated global action, including investment in resilient food systems and targeted humanitarian aid, millions more are at risk of chronic hunger and life-threatening malnutrition.
The most critical hunger and malnutrition trends across Africa in 2025 are deeply concerning, with indicators worsening in multiple regions despite some global improvements.
Q: Could you highlight regional differences or hotspots?
A: Almost no region is untouched:
In West and Central Africa, over 52 million people face hunger during the 2025 lean season—an all-time high.
Southern Africa: Countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Namibia are seeing up to 40 per cent of their populations in acute food insecurity due to drought, floods, and economic shocks.
East Africa: Over 69 million people face acute food insecurity, half of the continent’s total undernourished population, according to the March 2025 update of the Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG).
Two other key Africa-wide analyses, from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification and the Global Report on Food Crises 2025 add that over 85 million people are highly food insecure in the East and Horn of Africa (including Sudan and South Sudan).
In some countries, one in three children is malnourished. Somalia has the highest rates, but Chad, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Guinea-Bissau also exceed 30 per cent undernourishment.
Q: What do recent statistics reveal about the scale of the crisis?
A: As of July 2025, more than 307 million Africans—over 20 per cent of the continent’s population—are affected by hunger. Childhood stunting averages 30.7 per cent across Africa, with wasting (insufficient weight relative to a child’s age) at 6 per cent.
In some countries, one in three children is malnourished. Somalia has the highest rates, but Chad, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Guinea-Bissau also exceed 30 per cent undernourishment.
But addressing this crisis isn’t just about recognizing the scale of the need. A core aspect of the Zero Hunger Campaign is rethinking the way we respond to food insecurity.
Defining durable solutions
Q: Durable solutions to addressing hunger can mean different things in different contexts. From your perspective, what are some of the core characteristics or principles that make a food security intervention ‘durable’?
A: Durable solutions are those that are sustainable, systemic, and capable of withstanding future shocks induced by either conflict, climate change, or economic instability.
Durable solutions require coordination, innovation, and inclusivity when addressing the root causes of hunger. They also build individual, community and agency resilience to food insecurity.
Durable solutions must be:
- Sustainable and systemic – able to withstand future climate, conflict, and economic shocks.
- Locally led and scalable – driven by communities, designed for replication.
- Integrated – combining agriculture, social protection, and market access.
- Focused on livelihoods – diversifying income and building resilience.
Q: How do these differ from short-term aid?
A: Short-term aid saves lives in emergencies, but it’s temporary. Durable solutions tackle root causes, empower communities, and build systems that last. They combine health, education, agriculture, and economic development so that people can feed themselves year after year.
An example of a project we’ve successfully replicated is the Village Model. In this project, households work together with support from the IFRC to improve food security, livelihoods, and resilience through shared resources, skills, and mutual support.
Q: What makes durable solutions so impactful in these contexts?
A: The attributes of a durable solution make it possible to transfer core methodologies and principles from one setting to another, adapting as needed for local success.
An example of a project we’ve successfully replicated is the Village Model. In this project, households work together with support from the IFRC to improve food security, livelihoods, and resilience through shared resources, skills, and mutual support.
By combining sustainable agriculture, savings groups, and social cohesion, it creates self-reliant villages capable of withstanding future shocks.
Q: How important is community ownership when it comes to the success of these interventions?
A: Community ownership and involvement are absolutely central to making zero hunger solutions both durable and scalable. When people design, manage, and adapt solutions themselves, they last longer and spread faster.
In Rwanda, community-managed livestock schemes flourished because members reinvested in each other. In Nigeria, men began supporting mothers’ clubs after seeing tangible benefits for their households.
Community-led approaches naturally foster replication and scale because they build confidence, local skills, and social structures that can extend successful models to new groups or regions. Strong community buy-in ensures that innovations are embraced, adapted, and promoted by local champions, creating a multiplier effect.
What needs to happen next
Q: What support is most urgently needed to scale durable, community-led solutions?
A: There is a significant financing gap—estimates indicate an additional $21–77 billion per year from public sources and much more from private sector investment is needed for food systems transformation in Africa.
Current financial flows are insufficient to bridge this gap and reach all communities in need. Community-led models need multi-year, stable funding—not just short-term, crisis-driven aid—to allow them to take root, expand, and demonstrate impact over time.
Other than that, we need enabling regulations, stronger government–community coordination, and expanded social protection programs, as well as training in climate-smart agriculture, organizational strengthening, and access to innovation and technology.
The shift in thinking we hope to inspire all partners and stakeholders should move from asking: ‘How can we feed people today?’ to asking: ‘How can we ensure people can feed themselves next year—and every year thereafter?’
Q: If there’s one message for donors and partners, what is it?
A: Sustainable, community-led solutions—not short-term fixes—are the only way to end hunger, and they require long-term, flexible investment and enabling policies to thrive.
Too often, hunger responses rely on crisis-driven, one-off aid. While essential in emergencies, these don’t dismantle the root causes—poverty, fragile food systems, inequitable access to resources, and climate shocks.
Durable, locally rooted approaches have already proven they can work, but they remain under-resourced and constrained by rigid funding cycles or policy barriers.
The shift in thinking we hope to inspire all partners and stakeholders should move from asking:
“How can we feed people today?”
to asking:
“How can we ensure people can feed themselves next year—and every year thereafter?”
Original source: IFRC
Image credit: Alexander Uggla/Finnish Red Cross
