At the Group of Twenty (G20) summit of financial executives this month in Bali, Senegalese Minister of Economy Amadou Hott asked the international food industry to refrain from banning food imports from Russia and Ukraine since vulnerable nations are suffering from the food crisis.
Hott stated that if food scarcity and high prices are not resolved immediately, more people will perish than when the world was battling COVID-19.
The World Health Organization reported that there had been 172,886 deaths from COVID-19 in Africa and over 8.7 million cumulative cases in 47 African countries.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) asked for urgent and long-term measures since the food crisis in Africa has been exacerbated by climate change, rising violence, and unproductive farming. According to recent assessments from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the African Union, the food crisis affects 346 million people in Africa.
Nations worldwide, including the United States and the European Union, have sanctioned the use of or trade in Russian goods due to the war in Ukraine.
Hott said that even though essentials like food and fertilizer are excluded from these restrictions, persons working in the food industry avoid these transactions to protect themselves.
“We understand that food and fertilizers are exempt from sanctions. However, the market participants — whether it’s traders, or the banks, or the insurers — are reluctant to participate if the products are coming from certain locations because they’re afraid to be sanctioned in the future,” he said.
Hott said, “Is it possible to say, whenever you’re buying fertilizer, food from Russia or from Ukraine or from wherever around the world, there will be no sanctions today, no sanctions tomorrow … so that we can stabilize the market? We are not responsible for this crisis, but we are suffering.”
G20 finance chiefs were looking to make progress on food security and debt challenges. Host Indonesia pressed for G20 nations to commit to taking more specific action to address food insecurity, particularly by sharing information on commodities stocks and coordinating better on macroeconomic policies.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, food prices and shortages were already increasing. However, given that Russia and Ukraine are two of the greatest producers of essentials like wheat, the war exacerbated the issues in regions like Africa and the Middle East.
According to Hott, the issue is particularly severe for Africans, which account for one-third of the world’s malnourished people. For example, he said Africa would be short two million tons of fertilizer this year, resulting in an $11 billion loss in food output.
Africa and other regions, he said, require investments to speed up domestic food production if they must stop relying on food imports. “Like during COVID times, the world came together and made extraordinary decisions in the shortest period of time,” Hott said. “All the partners changed procedures and policies to really meet the challenge — like the IMF, the World Bank, the ADB — everybody changed their policies to help the countries.”
“This time, it is the same. If we don’t get [help] fast, we’ll have more casualties than during COVID times,” he said.