More than 90% of population in 12 African countries can’t afford regular healthy diet, says FAO

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), yesterday, said that in 12 countries – all of them in Africa – more than 90 per cent of the population is unable to afford regular healthy diet.

This was revealed through new global indicators developed by FAO, with input from researchers at Tufts University and the World Bank. The discovery showed the same is true of more than half the population in 53 countries for which data is available. In 26 countries that figure is less than one per cent.

The data, according to a statement by FAO, serves as a reminder that even if the world has made progress towards providing enough calories to feed the global population, there remains a long road ahead to sustainably nourishing all people everywhere.

Recently, FAO did an extensive analysis of how many people could afford a healthy diet, one that offers diversity of nutrient-rich food, aligned with dietary guidance. The result was sobering: billions of people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet.

Now the indicators show, for example, that Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest cost of healthy diet compared to other regions, at $3.89 per person per day in 2020, followed by Asia ($3.72), Africa ($3.46), Northern America and Europe ($3.19) and Oceania ($3.07).

Between 2019 and 2020, Asia witnessed the highest surge in the cost of a healthy diet (4.0 per cent), followed by Oceania (3.6 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (3.4 per cent), Northern America and Europe (3.2 per cent) and Africa (2.5 per cent).

Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 – an increase of 112 million more people than in 2019, reflecting the higher costs of a healthy diet in 2020.