the future of the ukrainian war is decided in the fighting in the Donbas region and in international public opinion. The sanctions applied by the US, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, among others, affect trade, millions of Central Asian workers who may lose their jobs in Russia and exports of sunflower, barley, corn and wheat on which Africa is highly dependent.
And 40% of the wheat consumed on the African continent is Russian, and another 10%, Ukrainian. It’s not just the port blocking, it’s the price that has shot up 30% since February 24.
For Vladimir Putin it is a tool of pressure to the West, whom he accuses of being responsible for the current famine in the horn of africa, and the one that will affect the Sahel. Vulnerable countries are asking Russia to allow shipping from the Ukrainian port of Odessa, and the West to lift sanctions on grain exports.
It is part of the same chess game, like natural gas and propaganda, whether on social networks or on television. Is a war of attrition in which Russia seems to have more chances of holding. Putin experiences it as a duel in the sun: he loses the first blink.
Cracks in the EU
The Kremlin sees cracks in the EU in the kind of sophisticated weapons it sends to Ukraine and in energy dependency. Germany fights against its historical memory, and Emanuel Macron, with internal political problems, he wants France to be the center of Europe, now that there are no British at the table.
Russia has a good image in Africa. Inherit the benefits of the anti-colonial policy of the USSR in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, in which Moscow supported guerrilla movements fighting for freedom. France, UK, Portugal and Belgium were on the wrong side. There are deep wounds that have not healed.
The Belgian Government has just returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo the only remaining remains of Patrice Lumumba, the great hero of independence: a gold tooth, but there is no acknowledgment of guilt in his murder. Moscow also benefits from China’s positiona shadow ally in the global fight against the US, which invests a lot and asks little.
Added to the consequences of the pandemic and the war in the economies are thethe effects of climate change. It is a perfect storm that can punish large regions of Africa and the Caribbean, as well as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to the think tank’s Climate Risk Index. Germanwatch.
Almost 2000 deaths daily
More than 1,800 people die of hunger every day in the Horn of Africa, where it has hardly rained since 2019. The Sahel region suffers from a chronic crisis that oscillates between the so-called season of hunger and the great famine. Eighteen million people are at risk of severe hunger in the next three months. It is the worst situation since 2014.
The climate change that has set off the alarms in Europe, with ttemperatures above 40 degrees in spring, is devastating for the poorest areas of the planet. According to a joint study by the Ingenio Institute and the Universities of Rome and Urbino Carlo Bo, a prolonged rise in temperatures multiplies the risk of armed conflict by four or five times. The Sahel is already the battlefield between authoritarian and corrupt governments supported by the EU to stop migration and jihadist groups.
In the West we are concerned about the energy prices and rising inflation. The most alarmist economists predict food shortages in supermarkets, fueling fears that drive the extreme right.
The starvation of the poorest is not a political or informational priority. There are no sustained structural measures to eradicate it, despite the fact that it is one of the engines of migration along with wars. Not everyone can or wants to travel to Europe. One in nine Africans migrate close to their country in search of work and livelihood. The elderly and the sick do not migrate, they only die.
Climate change will generate wars for water that will surpass those that have been waged for oil. If a summer of extreme temperatures awaits southern Europe, on the other side of the Mediterranean it will be the hell. In the coming decades, or perhaps just years, there will be millions of climate refugees. Let’s not be too shocked, maybe one day we will be part of that survival movement that flees to the north.