Monrovia — Liberia has once again been classified as a country facing "serious" hunger, according to the 2025 Global Hunger Index (GHI), ranking 112th out of 123 countries with sufficient data.
The ranking follows a similarly poor showing in 2024, when Liberia placed 120th out of 127 countries, highlighting a pattern of stalled progress despite modest improvements over the past two decades.
The GHI is designed to measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple dimensions of undernutrition over time. It aims to highlight areas where hunger is most severe and call attention to the need for targeted interventions.
With a score of 30.0, Liberia remains firmly within the "serious" hunger category (scores between 20.0 and 34.9), making it one of the most food-insecure nations globally.
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Hunger Indicators
The 2025 GHI, the 20th edition of the report, examines four indicators that reveal the severity of hunger including undernourishment: 35.5% of Liberians suffer from insufficient caloric intake; Child Stunting: 26.9% of children under five are stunted, reflecting chronic undernutrition; Child Wasting: 3.4% of children under five are wasted, indicating acute nutritional shocks, and Child Mortality: 7.3% of children die before age five.
The GHI emphasizes that hunger is not only about food availability but also about diet quality, healthcare access, sanitation, and caregiving practices, particularly affecting rural populations and children.
Structural Challenges
The report notes that Liberia's hunger situation is driven by systemic and structural factors, including poverty and reliance on subsistence, rain-fed agriculture, weak health infrastructure, and limited access to clean water and sanitation, fragmented social protection systems, chronic underinvestment in rural infrastructure, and human capacity.
While Liberia's GHI score has improved numerically--from 47.7 in 2000 to 30.0 in 2025--progress remains slow, uneven, and insufficient to change the lived reality for millions of Liberians.
Analysts say the report casts a dark cloud over the Boakai-Koung administration, which has made agriculture a major priority. Under its national development program, the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID), the government emphasized agriculture and planned to partner with key institutions to boost local food production and combat malnutrition.
However, with the abrupt closure of USAID, a key development partner, the government now faces a significant gap to fill. One of the major programs affected is the USAID-sponsored school feeding initiative, which supports several schools across the country. Analysts warn that to achieve the goals outlined in the AAID, the government will need to realign its development plan and significantly strengthen implementation.
The U.S. government spent more than US$14 million on agriculture projects in 2024, according to data from the official U.S. government website foreignassistance.gov, including major initiatives focused on food security. Additional funding supported roads, electricity, and other infrastructure critical to the production, transportation, and storage of food.
Commenting on the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report on Liberia, leading economist Dr. Toga Gayewea McIntosh said that hunger fuels a devastating cycle. According to him, hunger erodes so-called "human capital"--the productivity of individuals within an economy--which in turn undermines economic recovery.
Dr. McIntosh noted that Liberia's economy remains dangerously undiversified, with nearly 80 percent of its food imported. This heavy dependence on imports, he said, exposes the country to global price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
He also called for increased investment in education and health systems to boost Liberians' productivity, while emphasizing the need to build industries capable of generating large-scale employment. Tourism, he said, remains one of the most viable sectors for job creation.
Government still in denial?
The Government of Liberia has not yet responded to the GHI's latest ranking. Neither the Executive Mansion nor the Ministry of Agriculture responded to inquiries from FrontPage Africa before publication.
However, following the 2024 GHI ranking, the government previously rejected the report's findings.
In an interview with NN/FPA, Agriculture Minister Dr. J. Alexander Nuetah acknowledged that hunger may occur at certain times but rejected claims that Liberia is facing severe hunger.
"I don't want to agree with that," he said.
Minister Nuetah attributed any increase in hunger to rising global rice prices. Rice, Liberia's staple food, accounts for more than half of the population's caloric intake, with about 70 percent imported. Reducing rice imports, he said, remains a priority of the Boakai administration, which took office a year ago.
According to the minister, the government has launched a National Agriculture Development Plan, with US$4 million allocated in the 2025 national budget to support domestic food production. The funding, he said, will come from the US$8 million budgeted under the "Agriculture Value Chain Project."
"By 2030, our target is to reverse the data," Minister Nuetah said. "Instead of importing 70 percent of our rice, we should be producing at least 70 percent domestically."
On the contrary, Macdonald Metzger, Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration in the Office of the Vice President, speaking in October 2025 at the 20th anniversary of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), attributed the country's dismal ranking to broader systemic failures across the region.
"We are off track because hunger is not just a food problem. It is a symptom of multiple interlocking system failures: weak institutions, chronic underinvestment in rural infrastructure and human capacity, inequality in access to resources, and an inability to scale promising pilots into national systems," Metzger said. "When you combine all of these challenges, you get a recipe for regression rather than steady progress. In short, the constraints are structural, institutional, and political--not just technical. We have not yet adapted our approach to the realities in our respective regions and countries."
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Global Context
Globally, the GHI warns that progress toward Zero Hunger has stalled. Although the global score declined slightly from 19.0 to 18.3 between 2016 and 2025, the report projects that at least 56 countries will fail to achieve even low hunger levels by 2030 if current trends persist.
"If progress remains at the current pace, low hunger globally may not be achieved until 2137," the report warns.
"We call on the government to act now and decisively. Leave no one behind," said Mathias Mogge, Secretary General/CEO of Welthungerhilfe. The Motto of the Agenda 2030. Act urgently on hunger and build resilient food systems. Strengthen national-level political commitment and prioritize localized implementation. Break the cycle of conflict and hunger. With that, let's turn from findings to forward-looking action."
What It Means for Liberia
Liberia's continued classification as a country with serious hunger highlights persistent challenges in governance, development, and public health. High hunger scores reflect underinvestment in nutrition, healthcare, rural infrastructure, and social protection, and have far-reaching consequences for education, productivity, and long-term economic growth.
The GHI underscores that achieving sustainable reductions in hunger requires coordinated, targeted, and sustained action at national and international levels. Without such measures, the cycle of deprivation may persist for another generation.
