Although hunger in Africa is hardly a new phenomenon, it now occurs in a world that has more than enough food to feed all its citizens. Moreover, while Africa's population is growing rapidly, it still has ample fertile land for growing food. Hunger, therefore, reflects not absolute food scarcity but rather people's lack of access to resources whether at the individual, household, community, or national level that are needed to produce or purchase adequate food supplies. The reasons people cannot obtain enough food are, of course, rooted in several different historical patterns of inequality. These patterns include the inequalities between Africa and its former colonizers or contemporary financiers, and between Africa's rich and poor.
Malnourished children suffer stunted growth and, often, learning problems.
Malnourished adults have less energy to work. Over the long term, inadequate nourishment can cast communities into a vicious cycle of sickness, underproduction, and poverty. This seemingly straightforward definition, however, avoids the much more complicated question of why people reach the point of starvation. Contrary to popular media coverage of the issue, famine in Africa is not an abrupt event, nor an immediate, inevitable outcome of drought or other climatic misfortunes. Rather, research on the history of famine shows that several factors typically contribute to a society's or region's vulnerability to starvation, and that some of the causes of famine have changed significantly over the past century.