UN RCO Briefing Note: 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)

The UN Resident Coordinator's Office in Rwanda has prepared this briefing note to inform dialogue around the release of the 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, prepared jointly by five UN specialised organisations: FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. It summarises the report's global and regional findings, situates Rwanda's food security and nutrition performance within the East African Community context, and highlights key messages intended to support advocacy and policy engagement.

 This year's SOFI edition arrives against a backdrop of mounting pressure on food systems worldwide. Input costs (fertilizer, fuel, transport and logistics) have risen sharply since 2021, driven by successive global shocks including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and, more recently, the 2026 Middle East conflict. At the same time, climate disruptions are becoming more frequent and more severe across Eastern and Southern Africa, with recurrent droughts and floods increasingly affecting harvests, transport corridors and food prices. The 2026 SOFI report's focus on the cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) as the binding constraint on nutrition outcomes is especially relevant in this context: it shifts the policy conversation from food availability alone toward the affordability of nutritious diets, and toward the structural, value-chain and market factors that determine whether households can actually access them.

 For Rwanda —a land-locked, densely populated economy with above-average exposure to input and transport cost volatility— this framing offers a timely and actionable lens for anticipating and mitigating the effects of these compounding global pressures, and for sustaining the affordability gains documented in this note.