The starvation in Africa is reminiscent of a not dissimilar tragedy in Biafra in the 1960s. The continent of Africa is facing yet another crisis in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The blockage of the export of grain from the former Soviet satellite has resulted in ballooning prices of food and exacerbated hunger and starvation. Life’s essentials are either not available or are frightfully priced, indeed the worst of both worlds. Though last Friday’s deal to unblock grain exports in Ukraine has been generally welcomed, the relentless war has led to grain shortages and burgeoning food prices across the generally impoverished continent. The popular disaffection was succinctly summed up by Celectin Tawamba, the chief executive of La Pasta, the largest flour and pasta producer in Cameroon ~ “The noose was tightening. So the deal should help us breathe.”
The continent is perfectly entitled to breathe. No fewer than 14 African nations are, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, dependent on the two warring nations for half of their wheat imports. Eritrea, for example, is wholly dependent on them. But the deal will have a limited impact in some other swathes of Africa, where the impoverished countries are battling internal political, economic and social crises that have contributed no less to mounting hunger and ballooning food prices. This is particularly true of countries in East Africa, where the worst drought in four decades has devastated farm and livestock, dried up rivers and wells, and led to the deaths of hundreds of children. Many African countries largely rely on cereals and rice. But those who do not consume wheat have increasingly favoured buying wheat from Russia because it is less expensive than grain from other countries. West African countries, notably Benin, Burkino Faso, Cameroon and Ivory Coast are particularly exposed to disruption of wheat exports from Russia.
Governments have frozen the price of baguettes or flour in an effort to contain the soaring wheat prices, which have jumped over the past two years from $250 per tonne in the summer of 2020 to $530 this spring. “It will be two to three months at the earliest by the time cheaper wheat gets to us,” is the dire forecast of a spokesman of La Pasta. However welcome the news of “unblocking” of grain exports, it does not quite address the soaring price of fertilizer and fuel, which has also been driven up by the war in Ukraine, now in its sixth month. The scourge of hunger has afflicted almost every swathe of Africa, save perhaps Nigeria thanks to its oil economy. In West Africa, where the planting season for most cereals started in May and June, the scarcity of affordable fertilizer because of the war could lead to the loss of the region’s loss of a quarter