AGRA Urges Global Leaders to Treat Hunger as a Systemic Global Risk

Nairobi, Kenya: AGRA has noted that the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 does not include hunger among its top 10 global risks over either the two-year or 10-year horizon. This is despite a world in which climate shocks are intensifying, ecosystems are under strain, global supply chains remain at risk, and the foundations of food production, especially in Africa, are steadily eroding. More than half of Africans depend directly on nature for their livelihoods, underscoring that food security, ecosystem health, and economic stability are deeply intertwined.

The report’s short-term (two-year) top risks are dominated by geoeconomic and geopolitical tensions as well as social and technological disruptions, including trade wars, misinformation and disinformation, societal polarisation, extreme weather events, and state-based armed conflict. Over the long-term (10-year) horizon, it highlights environmental threats such as extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse, alongside misinformation, adverse outcomes of artificial intelligence, and natural resource shortages. Hunger appears in neither of the top risk lists.

AGRA recognises the seriousness of the risks highlighted in the Global Risks Report, including the way geopolitical fragmentation can crowd out long-term priorities. However, hunger is not a niche humanitarian concern. It is a compounding, destabilising risk multiplier that fuels displacement, undermines political stability, deepens inequality, and weakens human capital and productivity. You cannot have strong economies without healthy ecosystems, and you cannot have healthy people without access to safe, affordable, and nutritious food.

“When hunger is treated as a downstream outcome rather than a front-line risk, the world responds too late after livelihoods collapse, after conflicts intensify, after children’s nutrition and learning are permanently damaged, and after fragile economies lose years of progress,” said Alice Ruhweza, President of AGRA. “The global community is rightly concerned about resilience and security. Food and nutrition security must therefore be integral to the global risk management architecture.”

A hunger crisis is already here, especially in Africa

The latest UN food security assessments show that hunger remains widespread globally and is rising in Africa. An estimated 673 million people faced hunger in 2024, and Africa’s prevalence of hunger surpassed 20 percent, affecting more than 307 million people. This trajectory is moving in the wrong direction for the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 2 on Zero Hunger. This, against the backdrop of a growing African population projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050.

At the same time, the scientific consensus is clear that climate change is already reducing food security through its impacts on crop yields, livestock, fisheries, food access, and food prices, effects that are particularly severe in Africa and for small-scale producers. Without transforming agriculture, climate resilience will remain out of reach.

Climate and nature are one crisis—and hunger is how it reaches households

AGRA aligns with the growing global call, echoed by environmental leaders, for climate and nature to be placed front and centre, with measurable implementation rather than pledges alone. For food systems, this translates into a practical reality: degraded soils, water stress, biodiversity loss, and rising temperatures are direct threats to harvests, incomes, diets, and stability. Land and soil degradation are steadily weakening productive capacity and resilience, amplifying the effects of droughts, floods, and heat.

Meeting Africa’s future food needs will require nature and climate-positive innovations in agriculture that increase productivity and yields while reducing pressure on land, limiting further ecosystem conversion, and accelerating adaptation to climate change.

“Hunger doesn’t wait for the world to finish debating risk rankings. It grows quietly through depleted soils, failed rains, unaffordable diets, and stunted children,” Ruhweza concluded. “Davos should be a turning point where global risk leadership reflects the reality facing farmers and families.”

AGRA’s position ahead of Davos 2026

As leaders gather in Davos next week, AGRA calls for a clearer global risk posture that explicitly recognises hunger and malnutrition as strategic risks and invests accordingly. AGRA urges governments, development banks, philanthropic partners, insurers, and agrifood businesses to act with urgency because the roadmap is clear.

The African Development Bank is projecting Africa’s food and agriculture market to reach USD 1 trillion by 2030, an investment case representing the immense economic, social, and environmental benefits of ending hunger and building resilient food systems, and within reach. The question is whether development leaders, policymakers, and private sector actors gathered here in Davos will act with the urgency this moment demands.

Reclassify hunger as a first-order global risk, tracked with the same urgency as conflict, cyber insecurity, and macroeconomic shocks, and integrated into national and global risk registers.

Scale climate adaptation that reaches smallholders, including stress-tolerant seeds, climate services, insurance and risk financing, and localised extension systems that translate science into farm-level decisions.

Put soil health and landscape restoration at the core of food security strategies, rewarding regenerative and sustainable practices that rebuild soil organic matter, reduce erosion, improve water retention, and protect ecosystems.

Invest in the enabling infrastructure of resilience, including water management, irrigation where viable, storage, rural roads, energy access, and efficient trade and market systems, so that climate shocks do not become food crises.