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North Africa Doing Well Against Hunger, Sub-Sahara Not So Much

North Africa Doing Well Against Hunger, Sub-Sahara Not So Much

Severe food insecurity has almost been eradicated in North Africa but about one in four people is still hungry in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world, according to the latest annual U.N. hunger report.

Improved agricultural productivity, inclusive growth and greater social protection resulted in an overall drop in world hunger, according to the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 report released May 27, IBTimes reports.

More than 90 percent of the world’s 570 million farms are managed by an individual or a family, relying predominately on family labor. These farms produce more than 80 percent of the world’s food.

The world has 21 percent fewer hungry people than 25 years ago, but it still has 795 million hungry people compared to the 1,011 million hungry in 1990 to 1992, according to the U.N. hunger report.

Twice as many African countries face food crises now as in 1990. About one of five of the world’s undernourished people lives in crisis environments.

African countries that made considerable progress reducing hunger include Angola, Cameroon, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Mali and Sao Tome and Principe, according to the report. These countries report a 50 percent decrease in the number of undernourished people and the prevalence of undernourishment since 1990–1992.

Sub-Saharan African countries that made the least progress in alleviating hunger include Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Madagascar, Namibia, Senegal, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, according to the U.N. report.

Western Africa was mentioned in the report for achieving millennium development goal hunger targets.

The food insecurity report is published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

These organizations rely on accurate statistics to be provided by the countries they included in the study. Hunger estimates are based on household surveys and other sources where reliable national household surveys are not available, according to FAO.org.