Because the generals in power in this Arab country in northeast Africa did not forget that, in 2019, the dictator Omar Al Bashir was overthrown under the pressure of a popular revolt born by the tripling of the price of bread.
Bread is already a luxury for millions of hungry people in Yemen at war, laments Walid Salah, a 35-year-old civil servant who is still waiting for his salary in Sanaa. “Most people can barely afford basic food,” he told AFP.
The war in Ukraine will only “make things worse. We thought we had hit bottom, but no, it’s even worse,” exclaims David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), also in Yemen. “We get half of our grain from Russia and Ukraine, this war is going to have a dramatic impact”stands out.
The war is also starving 12.4 million Syrians, according to the WFP. The last straw in a country that was self-sufficient in wheat until 2011 but that, after years of conflict -where Russia helped the regime militarily- had to buy “1.5 million tons of wheat, mainly from Moscow” in 2021, according to the specialized site The Syria Report.
Syria says it will try to distribute the stocks over two months. For its part, Lebanon will have less time after the collapse of the banking system, which plunged 80% of the population into poverty, and an explosion in the port of Beirut that destroyed grain silos in August 2020.
With five ships from Ukraine still to unload, “we only have a month and a half left,” Ahmed Hoteit, spokesman for Lebanese wheat importers, told AFP. In general, “80% of the 600,000 to 650,000 tons of imported wheat come from Ukraine” through ships that arrive in Lebanon in seven days, he explains.
“The alternative now is the United States,” but then the trip will last 25 days, he adds. In the Maghreb, where Wheat is the basis for both couscous and bread, Morocco increased flour subsidies to $393 million and suspended customs duties on wheat.
A luxury that Tunisia no longer has. In December, the ships refused to unload their cargo of wheat for lack of payment, according to the country’s press, where debt increases as foreign exchange reserves melt. Tunisia, where 60% of wheat imports come from Ukraine and Russia, has reserves until June, says Abdelhalim Gasmi, from the Ministry of Agriculture.
Algeria, the second largest African consumer of wheat and the world’s fifth largest importer of cereals, announces six months of reserves.
Far ahead, Egypt is the world’s leading importer of wheat. And the second customer from Russia with 3.5 million tons purchased until mid-January, according to S&P Global. And while Egypt has in recent years started buying elsewhere, especially Romania, in 2021, 50% of its wheat imports still come from Russia and 30% from Ukraine.
Source: Ambito
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