The war in Ukraine has delivered a shock to global energy markets, now the planet is facing a deeper crisis: a shortage of food.
The continent is deeply reliant on cereals imports and the continent’s top economist reveals that the war in Ukraine threatens to lead to food riots, political upheaval, and turn back the clock in years of progress in Africa.
Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank, said: “This war has to come to an end. It’s not just a war in Ukraine. It’s a war that has global ramifications.”
In Lebanon, the government has only about a month’s wheat supply left. In Iraq, protests had broken out because of an unprecedented rise in the prices of food products. Hungary has banned all grain imports and the United Nations World Food Program has had to cut ration supplies to Yemen.
David M. Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, the U.N. agency that feeds 125 million people a day, said: “Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe. There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”
China, facing its worst wheat crop in decades after severe flooding, is planning to buy much more of the world’s dwindling supply. And India, which ordinarily exports a small amount of wheat, has already seen foreign demand more than triple compared with last year.
Dr. Adesina said that Covid-19 lockdowns across the continent and a climate change-induced drought across eastern Africa had already severely damaged food production and that the rapidly rising food prices were throwing regional governments a curveball.
Ukraine and Russia export about 25 percent of the world’s wheat, while together, both countries make up about 80 percent of the world’s sunflower oil trade.
Africa relies heavily on both countries for food imports countries like Benin, Somalia, Tanzania, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Egypt get more than 50 percent of their wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the World Food Program, which helps feed tens of millions of people in crises across Africa, buys more than half of the wheat from Ukraine.
Dr. Adesina said that rising food and energy prices could have serious political repercussions for many African countries. He said: “That keeps me very worried. We may have some food riots because people can’t survive like that.”
“We saw what happened in Tunisia. The Arab Spring came just because of that. If we don’t bring the prices down very quickly, it creates a risk of fragility in already very tense political situations in many African countries,” he added.
He also added that the increased price of liquified gas meant that more Africans were returning to cooking with charcoal which is far more polluting and extremely damaging for the health.
Nooruddin Zaker Ahmadi, director of Bashir Navid Complex, an Afghan imports company, said that prices were rising across the board. It took him five days in Russia this month to find cooking oil.
He bought 15-liter cartons for $30 each and will sell them at the Afghan market for $35. Before the war, he sold them for $23. Ahmadi said: “The United States thinks it has only sanctioned Russia and its banks. But the United States has sanctioned the whole world.”
Jon Bakehouse, a corn and soybean farmer in Hastings, Iowa, said he prepaid for fertilizer late last year because he worried about a looming shortage. His fertilizer still has not arrived, and he now has less than a month to apply it to his corn crop.
Without it, he said, his yields would be halved. Bakehouse said: “You know when they show the cars jumping in slow motion and the passengers inside are up in the air? That’s what it feels like.”
“We’re all just kind of suspended in the air, waiting for the car to land. Who knows if it’s going to be a nice, gentle landing or if it’s going to be a nosedive into the ditch?” he added.
There’s a reason Ukraine is nicknamed “the breadbasket of Europe.” The country produces about 10% of the world’s wheat, 14 % of its corn, and half of its sunflower oil. And all of that is now under threat because of the Russian invasion.