Ukraine crisis affecting East Africa’s overall food security: WFP

ADDIS ABABA: The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned that the ongoing Ukraine crisis is negatively affecting East Africa’s food security through reduced food and other commodities supplies, market disruptions and reduced accessibility.

The WFP, in its latest situation update on the implications of the Ukraine conflict on food access and availability in the East Africa region issued late Monday, said the Ukraine crisis is exacerbating the already dire food security situation across countries in Eastern Africa region.

Reduced agricultural production and blockades in the Black Sea region coupled with trade restriction policies affecting flows of essential goods such as grains and sunflower-seed oil, have led to reduced availability of staples and a sharp increase in global grain prices with implications on local market prices across East Africa, the WFP said.

“All countries in Eastern Africa have and will continue to be affected either directly or indirectly by the spillovers of Ukraine’s crisis because of their low level of economic resilience,” the WFP said.

As of May 2022, commodities recording the highest year-on-year increase are vegetable oils registering a 45.9 percent increase compared to April 2021, cereals at 36.6 percent increase, and beans with a 14.1 percent increase, according to figures from WFP.

The WFP said the rise in fuel and food prices pushed up the inflation rate across East African countries, implying households, especially the poorest ones, have fewer resources to spend on essential food and non-food needs.

It further indicated that a correlation can be noted between international crude oil and global food prices, in which when the prices of crude oil peaked in March 2022, also the global prices of food, particularly vegetable oil and cereals registered a record high during the same period.

The higher cost of energy most likely raised the cost of food production and agricultural activities of manufacturing, processing and packaging, as well as transportation in the short term.

The WFP further noted that global fertilizer prices have risen by nearly 30 percent since the start of 2022 because of surging input costs, supply disruptions caused by sanctions on Belarus and Russia, and export restrictions.

It said the share of fertilizers imported into the region reduced, which also coincided with the peak March-April-May main planting season.

WFP estimated that cereal production during the 2022 cropping year could potentially decrease by 16 percent year-on-year due to high fertilizer and fuel prices.

As of June 2002, East African countries seeing the sharpest reduction in fertilizer imports were Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Kenya.

It said that deduced economic activity in both Russia and Ukraine will directly affect countries contingent on their bilateral economic exposure to the two countries.

-Xinhua