The number of people facing hunger globally declined from 688 million in 2023 to 673 million in 2024, according to “The State of Food Security & Nutrition in the World 2025,” a report recently released by the five leading United Nations agencies working on the issue. But progress has not been equal, with Africa experiencing a slight increase in the number of undernourished people, from 296 million to 306 million.
Worryingly, this pattern is set to continue. The report estimates that, even as global hunger declines, 512 million people will still be undernourished in 2030, nearly 60pc of whom will be in Africa.
The continent’s policymakers can avert this outcome. The most effective strategy would be to improve Africa’s agricultural productivity and maintain progress against extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding. That will require governments to work with the African Union (AU) and key stakeholders in the agriculture sector, including universities, research institutions, development partners, NGOs, financial institutions, and philanthropic organisations. They should focus on five areas.
There is an urgent need to mobilise investment in improving soil health and restoring Africa’s degraded landscapes, which are a major cause of food insecurity and hunger. As much as 65pc of Africa’s cultivated land is degraded, and the continent loses a staggering four billion dollars worth of soil nutrients each year to erosion. Continuous cultivation is particularly damaging to soil fertility and results in lower crop yields across the continent.
African leaders are waking up to this crisis. In 2024, the AU convened a summit on fertiliser and soil health, bringing together a broad coalition of stakeholders to discuss strategies for improving Africa’s crop productivity. Perhaps the most important outcome of the summit was an action plan for addressing soil health in all agricultural sectors, with an emphasis on fostering multi-stakeholder partnerships.
Africa should increase investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) to unlock sustainable productivity gains. Currently, most African countries allocate less than one percent of their agriculture sector’s share of GDP to agricultural R&D. By increasing this share and mobilising private-sector capital, African governments could help drive innovations, from climate-resilient and high-yielding crop varieties to early warning systems for pests and diseases.
African governments and all other stakeholders should ensure that farmers embrace existing and future technologies, such as climate-smart irrigation systems, real-time weather forecasting, and mobile-based platforms that deliver timely trainings, recommendations, and support. Several countries are starting to recognise that encouraging and enabling the uptake of the latest advances is essential for improving agricultural efficiency and resilience. For example, earlier this year, Botswana launched its own satellite in part to provide real-time agriculture data.
To accelerate the adoption of these innovations, governments should do more than improve access to them. They should also increase financial support for farmers, collaborate with universities to provide ongoing training, and invest in critical infrastructure such as roads, electricity, and digital connectivity. These efforts would empower farmers to become active participants in transforming African agriculture.
Special attention should be paid to women, who constitute an estimated 40pc of Africa’s agricultural labour force but face systemic barriers that bar them from full and equal participation in the sector. Governments could develop capacity-building programs and enact policies that address some of the challenges confronting female farmers, including limited land ownership, which would go a long way toward spurring rural development and reducing household hunger.
Lastly, more efforts should be made to engage with Africa’s rapidly growing youth population, which is projected to double in size by 2050. Young Africans possess the energy, creativity, and entrepreneurial drive needed to strengthen food security, but remain underutilised largely because of limited access to financing and mentorship. To reduce hunger and create the conditions for long-term economic growth, African governments, the AU, and other stakeholders should invest in the next generation of agricultural leaders and innovators, providing them with the resources and training to succeed.
Reversing the alarming trend of increasing hunger across Africa calls for urgent action. Food security begins with healthy soil and sustainable productivity growth, which requires adopting regenerative farming practices, investing in agricultural research, and embracing new technologies. However, these changes should be accompanied by efforts to empower farmers, particularly women, and unlock Africa’s youth potential.
The continent already has the seeds of a solution to its hunger problem. Now it only needs the right conditions to grow them.
Over a decade ago, Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, together with their co-author Thierry Verdier, contrasted America’s “cutthroat” brand of capitalism with Western Europe’s “cuddly” version. The qualities that make cutthroat capitalism more conducive to innovation, they argued, also lead to higher levels of inequality, while cuddly reward structures tend to lead to lower growth and higher welfare. Today, inequality is soaring, notably in the United States.
Do policies aimed at boosting innovation risk make a bad situation worse?
In the economics literature, one can find plenty of support for the idea that technological innovation is a key driver of inequality. But another important line of thinking attributes rising inequality largely to “financialisation,” a term that encompasses the financial sector’s growing share in the economy, the increasing reliance of non-financial firms on financial activities as a revenue source, and corporate governance focused on maximising dividends for shareholders, rather than investing in future growth.
My co-author Juneyoung Lee and I recently sought to shed light on which factor has a greater role in driving inequality. We grouped countries according to their levels of innovation and financialisation. We found the highest levels of inequality in the low-innovation and high-financialisation group, which includes a range of developed and emerging economies, such as Brazil, Spain, and Turkey. Inequality was also relatively high in the group where both innovation and financialisation were substantial, including most of the Anglo-American capitalist economies, as well as Japan and South Korea.
By contrast, the high-innovation and low-financialisation group, which includes many of Europe’s advanced economies, such as Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway, showed the lowest levels of inequality. The low-innovation and low-financialisation group, which includes most of the emerging economies, such as India, Russia, and some Eastern European countries, has intermediate levels of inequality.
Ultimately, we found no link between innovation and income inequality. This finding challenges those of the French economist Phillippe Aghion, who argues that innovation, as measured by the quality-weighted number of patents, tends to exacerbate inequality, because the profits generated by the associated productivity gains become monopoly rents for the innovators. But, Aghion’s approach fails to account for other effects of innovation, such as increased investment in physical capital, which can mitigate negative distributional effects by creating job opportunities and increasing the incomes of workers who work with the new systems or equipment.
These benefits are particularly robust when it comes to “product innovation” (the introduction of a new or updated good), because the new product generates a wave of new demand, which spurs increased investment. “Process innovation” (the introduction of a new method of production) is often labour-saving in the short run, but even here, the effect on inequality is typically offset in the longer term by cost savings.
Using the same measure of innovation as Aghion, but accounting for these factors, I have found that innovation does not affect overall inequality or the income share of the top one to five percent. The monopoly rents associated with innovations tend to be short-lived, as other firms eventually adopt the new technology.
This brings us back to financialisation, which is directly correlated with inequality, specifically, the gutting of the middle class. As the ratio of stock-market capitalisation, or of stocks traded, to GDP rises, income is redistributed from the middle class to top earners. (The incomes of the bottom 50pc are not necessarily affected.)
This effect could be seen in the US after the 2008 global financial crisis, when unprecedented monetary easing caused stock prices to rise, giving the illusion of a robust recovery, even as employment lagged and the real economy struggled. Similarly, in the third quarter of 2023, Japanese stock prices surged to record highs, owing to monetary easing and share buybacks, even though growth had been negative for the previous two quarters.
It is worth noting that financialisation (the influence of financial activities on non-financial firms) is not the same as financial development (the depth, accessibility, and capabilities of financial institutions). Financial development, measured as the ratio of private credit, or of liquid liabilities, to GDP, does not appear to have a significant effect on the income share held by the highest earners.
The message is clear. Policymakers concerned about inequality should not fear technological innovation or financial development, which will lead to growth and jobs in the long run. But they should consider steps to mitigate the distributional consequences of financialisation, such as raising taxes on the financial incomes of the wealthiest households. If they do nothing, the decline of the middle class will continue.
The deluge of crises over the past five years, from the COVID-19 pandemic to wars in Ukraine and Gaza to America’s destructive tariff policy, has put the postwar global order under immense pressure. Multilateral institutions, including the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), are struggling to respond effectively to an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, where international cooperation is being steadily supplanted by great-power politics.
Amid this economic fragmentation and political disarray, the Global South and philanthropic organisations should take a pragmatic approach to protecting development gains and pursuing climate resilience. This means building issue-based coalitions, strengthening domestic institutions, and making the most of opportunities to lead on the global stage, such as South Africa’s G20 presidency and India’s turn as BRICS+ chair in 2026.
Perhaps most consequential is Brazil’s role as host of this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which is expected to focus on delivering past commitments and scaling up outcomes. Equally important will be the updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which all signatories of the Paris climate agreement have to submit, ideally within the next month. According to the UN Environment Programme’s 2024 Emissions Gap Report, there is a need for NDCs that are better aligned with the agreement’s pathway for limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
More ambitious NDCs, in turn, will require greater international collaboration and reforms to the global financial architecture.
Action has become imperative. Despite the falling cost of renewable energy, fossil-fuel use continues to grow. As a result, climate change and biodiversity loss have accelerated. Efforts to close the climate-finance gap have fallen short. The New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance agreed at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, is grossly inadequate, and the situation looks set to deteriorate, as America retreats inward and other developed countries significantly increase defence spending.
Likewise, progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has stalled, owing to a persistent four trillion dollars annual financing gap. While progress has been real and substantial, it remains fragile and unequal. As flows of official development assistance dry up and global debt reaches a record high, developing innovative ways to mobilise domestic and foreign capital has become an urgent priority. With that goal in mind, the Fourth International Conference on Finance for Development recently established a reform-oriented global financing framework and committed to a rules-based multilateral trading system.
The conference also launched the Borrowers’ Forum, a platform that enables debt-distressed countries to negotiate collectively.
Global South countries are learning not to pin their hopes on the rich world’s empty promises. As a result, they are shifting their focus to implementation. Brazil launched an Action Agenda for COP30, while South Africa’s G20 presidency has highlighted the nexus of climate, development, and debt.
Faced with unsustainable debt levels and prohibitive borrowing costs, the Global South, and particularly African, governments should improve fiscal resilience to scale up long-term investments in climate action and respond quickly to climate-related shocks. This by no means absolves developed countries of their financial obligations under Article 9 of the Paris agreement, but it represents a pragmatic imperative for Global South countries that do not want their climate and development priorities held hostage to great power politics.
In such an environment, philanthropic organisations should reassess their role in helping national and regional actors achieve development and climate goals. Addressing financing gaps in low- and middle-income countries, as well as the transition risks that all countries face, while also addressing existing priorities such as inflation, unemployment, and social unrest, should imply the need to expand social protection for the most vulnerable.
But, instead of taking an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach, philanthropies should be more focused on expanding their reach, while also improving coordination among themselves. This is especially true in Africa, where only a handful of large philanthropic organisations are based.
The Just Energy Transition Partnerships in South Africa, Vietnam, and Indonesia have shown that philanthropies can play a valuable role in establishing government-led country platforms for coordinating public- and private-sector finance in service of development and climate goals. Philanthropic organisations can provide early financing, support capacity building, and bring other actors, including community groups and small and medium-sized enterprises, on board.
Another priority should be situating climate action in a development context. In Africa, that means helping countries reduce their debt overhangs, strengthen fiscal resilience, and devise credible investment plans for facilitating climate action. All of this should build the countercyclical economic momentum needed for sustainable growth. But, it requires philanthropies to start engaging with the multilateral processes, using their flexibility, risk tolerance, and trust-building capacity to advance the Global South’s interests by strengthening institutional and human capacity.
To deliver on-the-ground results in climate-vulnerable countries confronting a confluence of global crises, philanthropies should collaborate with governments, grassroots organisations, and development banks, concentrating on supporting systemic change as much as on providing relief. That will require staying focused on strategic climate and development objectives and being prepared to manage trade-offs.
The new age of great-power politics will eventually pass. But Global South governments and philanthropic organisations cannot afford to bide their time until then. Instead, they should take concrete steps toward ensuring sustainable growth and strengthening international partnerships. The only way to emerge from this era of disorder is to confront it head-on.
Teshome Gemechu (Maj. Gen.), head of the foreign relations and military cooperation directorate of the Ministry of Defence, spoke about the historical and geographic rationales for Ethiopia’s bid to gain access to the Red Sea. He said survival is a national interest worth paying any price.
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