Africa has warned food shortage due to Russia's blockade of Ukraine's ports

 

The African Union has warned European leaders that Moscow's blockade of Ukraine's ports threatens a "catastrophic scenario" of food shortages and price increases.

If present global food supply trends continue, Senegal's president, Macky Sall, who chairs the union, says "the worst is perhaps ahead of us."

Sall said African countries have been heavily struck by the global food crisis because of their "heavy dependence" on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, speaking via video link to the 27 EU leaders meeting in Brussels. He described the situation as "worrying" for a continent with 282 million people who were hungry.

"In the near term, we'd like to see everything done to release available grain reserves and assure transportation and market access, in order to avoid a catastrophic scenario of shortages and widespread high prices."

Africa used to purchase 44 percent of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia before the war. In Ukraine alone, enough food was grown to feed 400 million people.

Russia's embargo of Ukrainian ports is contributing to a "perfect storm" for global food supplies, analysts say, as farmers grapple with rising energy and fertilizer costs as well as the lingering effects of coronavirus labor restrictions. Drought is also threatening to cut wheat crops in France, the United States, and India.

There have been proposals to end the blockade. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, stated on Tuesday that he and Angela Merkel had proposed to Vladimir Putin that the blockade be lifted in accordance with a UN decision. Mevlüt avuşolu, Turkey's foreign minister, said his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov will visit next week for talks on a number of issues, including the creation of a Black Sea route for Ukrainian grain shipments.

David Beasley, the chief of the United Nations World Food Programme, warned earlier this month that over 49 million people in 43 countries were on the verge of starvation. "We are compelled to make the sad decision in many nations to take food away from hungry children in order to give it to starving youngsters," he said.

According to Sall, fertilizer prices are currently three times higher than they were in 2021, and African cereal yields are expected to be 20-50 percent lower this year.

He also blamed EU restrictions on Russian banks for compounding the problem: "When the Swift system is disrupted, even if the products are available, payment becomes more difficult, if not impossible."

The EU has removed some of Russia's major banks from the Swift interbank messaging system, which is based in Belgium, making doing business with them nearly difficult.