Latest News About 2022–2023 Food Crises

Here’s a concise update on the latest publicly available information about the 2022–2023 food crises.

Core takeaway

• The 2022–2023 period continued to see alarmingly high levels of acute food insecurity across many countries, with conflict, economic shocks, and climate-related events as the primary drivers. In 2023, about 238 million people across 48 food-crisis countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity, representing a persistently severe global hunger situation. This level was a continuation of long-running crises, though some countries saw improvements due to humanitarian assistance and favorable conditions in certain regions.[2][4][8]

Key regional and country patterns

• East Africa remained the region most affected by acute food insecurity, driven largely by ongoing conflict and displacement, including the Sudan crisis, which intensified in 2023 and contributed to large-scale displacements and hunger.[2]
• Several countries showed improvements in certain periods of 2022–2023, notably Sri Lanka and Niger, where improvements in conditions reduced the number of people facing acute insecurity by 2.4 million and 1.1 million respectively during the period covered by the mid-year 2023 updates.[2]

Drivers and dynamics

• Conflict and insecurity continued to be the dominant drivers, affecting the majority of the worst-affected areas, with violence, displacement, and governance challenges undermining access to food and humanitarian aid.[8][2]
• Global market and policy developments also influenced food security. For example, disruptions in grain trade and policy shifts around major exporters and importers contributed to price volatility and uncertainty in 2023 and 2024, complicating humanitarian planning.[8][2]

What this means for 2023–2024

• While the overall picture remained dire, the data for 2023 (covering January–August 2023) and the mid-year updates indicate both persistent hunger in many places and pockets of improvement where humanitarian responses, local resilience, and some favorable conditions helped reduce acute insecurity in a subset of countries.[8][2]
• The evolving geopolitics around global grain flows (including events like the termination of grain-export initiatives) could affect prices and food availability in the near term, underscoring the need for continued humanitarian access and adaptive food-security strategies.[2]

Illustrative figures

• A typical snapshot from 2023 reports shows nearly 238 million people in 48 countries facing high acute food insecurity, underscoring the scale of the crisis and the concentration in East Africa and other hotspot regions.[2]

Would you like me to pull the latest official GRFC summarize or prepare a country-by-country brief focusing on the top 10 affected countries, with latest figures and drivers? I can also provide a short chart showing regional trends if you want. If you’d like sources, I can attach direct citations after each data point.