More than 50% of urban South Africans have never gone a day without having anything to eat, research released on Sunday has found.
Markinor, an associate of Gallop International, which carried out the study, said 73% of urban South Africans who participated in the survey had rarely or never experienced hunger.
”However, this is the view representative of South Africans in the metropolitan areas only,” the marketing research group said in a statement.
”If the deep rural areas in our country were also included, the picture would possibly have been more in line with that of the rest of Africa, although the interviews … were also conducted only in the main urban areas.”
More than 1,3-billion people globally participated in the study conducted between May and July.
The results were released in commemoration of World Food Day on Sunday.
A quarter of the world’s population rates poverty and hunger as the biggest humanitarian threat in the 21st century, the company said.
Of the 68 countries that participated in the survey, 56 cited the gap between the rich and the poor as the main problem facing the world today.
Hunger was found to be the biggest problem in Latin America and Africa.
In Africa, Nigeria (56%) had the highest number of people who went hungry in the past year.
Others include Cameroon (52%), Togo (42%), Kenya (39%) and Ghana (32%).
Among the countries with the least percentages of people going hungry were Portugal and Taiwan (4%), Germany (3%), Hong Kong (2%) and Austria (1%).
Only one in 10 of those interviewed globally mentioned terrorism, unemployment, war and conflicts as problems facing the world. — Sapa