Chris – you raise an interesting point, and I agree with your point about conflict related issues. I’m not an expert in Sub-Saharan food security however I do wonder if the food security situation in parts of Africa sometime appears worse indeed due to long-standing climatic-induced food security issues on very fragile environments/ecosystems.
It is interesting to note that the research shows Sub-saharan Africa and Asia to be very close in food-energy deficiency percentages, (57% and 51% respectively – not a big gap) however when it comes to severe food energy deficiency this is much worse in Sub-saharan Africa than in Asia (51% compared to 35%). I think the difference is that the nutritional level of the food is much lower in SS-Africa than in Asia – for example Sub-Saharan Africa has a higher reliance on a very uniform diet whilst Asia has a better access to a more diverse diet. (e.g. legumes, diary etc)
More info can be found in this paper here: https://www.ifpri.org/publication/food-insecurity-more-severe-south-asia-or-sub-saharan-africa