“Africa is a hostage of Putin, who has imposed a ban on wheat exports from the country,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zalansky said this week in a virtual meeting with the heads of the African Union (AU). He said that although the war was physically far from the people of Africa, the rise in food prices brought it closer to developing a home for millions of hungry people across the continent. The war, no doubt, carries severe geopolitical consequences. Ukraine and Russia are the two largest countries in Europe, and they play a key role in the global food market, and the battle between them harms the weakened countries that depend on them, in Europe and Asia, and exacerbates the catastrophic food crisis that is taking place in Africa.
The Russian invasion, which led to the cessation of international trade with Russia and Ukraine, created disruptions and restrictions in the chains of production, supply and export of agricultural goods. These have significantly affected the supply of food and cereals to countries around the world, with a global price increase of about 30% in the background. In addition, extreme climates and natural disasters, including floods and droughts, diseases and epidemics (such as Ebola and Corona), along with power struggles and local wars, along with a sharp rise in prices in domestic markets, exacerbated the dimensions of poverty and hunger in African countries. Due to the difficult situation there, the Red Cross warns that millions of populations are struggling with malnutrition and acute food shortages. In other words – food insecurity.
The hard facts speak for themselves. Many of the countries of the Black Continent, which have not yet recovered from the corona crisis, depend on imports of food, grains, oils and fertilizers from Ukraine and Russia. The two are responsible for supplying about 30% of world wheat exports. While Russia is responsible for about 17% of the world’s wheat exports, Ukraine is the leader in grain exports and holds a 12% share of the world market. It supplies 17% of corn exports and about 80% of all cooking oils, such as canola oil and sunflower oil.
In the last decade, African countries’ demand for grain and wheat imports has increased. In the years 2007-2019, it grew by 68%, reaching 47 million tons. For example, Eritrea imports all its wheat stocks from Ukraine and Russia; Egypt, Libya and Sudan import about 85% of them; Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country (about 200 million people) and the fourth largest importer of wheat in the world, imports from Ukraine and Russia about a quarter of its wheat consumption.
Thus, if until before the invasion grain production in Ukraine supplied food to some 400 million people in Africa, this population has since been in dire straits. Disruptions in the supply of goods led to a global rise in prices in the energy market as well, which affected the costs of food production and transportation, all in addition to the dire circumstances that existed in the first place across Africa.
As mentioned, this is a combination of severe socio-economic hardship following the Corona crisis with conflicts and power struggles over local resources (such as the Ethiopian civil war and ethnic conflict in Sudan), in addition to extreme weather damage that has caused the worst drought in four decades. All of this has led to a sharp jump in food prices in local markets while the population groans under appalling living conditions.
Systematic extermination
If that is not enough, Ukraine is the main source of supply from which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization purchases about half the amount of wheat it distributes around the world. In the Black Sea (Odessa, Kherson and Mykolaiv), which are responsible for exporting goods, including cereals, to international markets.
Worse, earlier this week the British Telegraph reported that Putin was behind the confiscation of Ukrainian cargo ships in the Black Sea, which is estimated to be the theft of some 600,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat shipped to Russia. This is in addition to the systematic destruction of huge agricultural produce in excess of 20 million tons of grain, including wheat grains, rotting in grain warehouses, and the deliberate destruction of millions of dunams of agricultural land throughout Ukraine.
In contrast, but in the same context, India, the second largest wheat producer in the world, has simultaneously announced a ban on its grain exports, due to extreme climate damage that has befallen the country. These numerous restrictions, disruptions and barriers prevent the transfer of critical emergency containers to Africa. This is a fatal blow to the poorest populations in the world, including children, who are in the highest risk group.
According to estimates by an international humanitarian aid organization operating in Kenya, some 5.5 million children are malnourished and immediately at risk of starvation in a severely affected country. All this while only partially implementing an international aid program under its auspices under the auspices of the United Nations. , Somalia and South Sudan, has so far been used sparingly at a rate of only 3% out of a $ 6 billion budget allocated for emergency aid for them.
Whatever the reasons may be, there is no longer any room for doubt. It is one of the worst food and nutrition crises in modern history, affecting entire populations across Africa. Now more than ever, West African countries, led by Nigeria, and East African countries, led by Ethiopia and South Sudan, are facing a real threat to the lives of millions of their citizens. According to a UN report in May, 11 countries in Africa are at extreme risk of food insecurity, compared to 6 countries in November 2021. At the same time, the World Nutrition Organization has warned that the population across the continent is currently facing death from starvation and malnutrition. Reaches 174 million citizens, almost four times as many as in 2018.
The heads of the World Health Organization and the World Nutrition Organization have warned that this is one of the most severe extremes experienced by the world and Africa in particular. It is a “ticking bomb” that could ignite into mass protests and demonstrations that will escalate into severe violence across Africa, similar to “Arab Spring” (2011), leading to a huge security crisis in one of the poorest and most explosive regions in the international arena.
It is time to wake up and realize that Putin’s war is having dire consequences, and that in this tragic state of emergency, governments around the world and international organizations must do everything in their power to help fund and supply food and basic subsistence needs to these populations, which are now abysmal. Their fate has largely been decided, but can Putin decide and decide for the citizens of Africa, who will survive and who will not? Will the world give a hand to all this and allow Africa to truly be Putin’s ‘hostage’?
The author is an expert on geopolitics, international crises and global terrorism