Browsing: Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism(AFFM)

At the close of 2022, between September to December, food prices soared around the world and with no signs of this abating in 2023, countries in Africa will have to move with speed to mitigate a looming food crisis. 

Food inflation is particularly pronounced and severe in low-income and middle-income countries. According to most recent sector reports, up to 94.1% of low-income countries around the world suffer food inflation.

With increasing food prices, the cost of living is increasing, and it is no better in lower-middle-income countries of which 92.9% are contending with food inflation.

Also Read: Starvation, death threaten Horn of Africa stability 

Even the upper-middle-income countries are also facing food inflation with 89% reporting unprecedented double-digit inflation. 

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), maize prices in December 2022 went up by 27% while wheat shot up 13% higher compared to the same period in 2021.

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Africa continues to grapple with what has been described by the UN, as the ’perfect storm of horrors’, due to the plethora of troubles that has hit the continent. From the climate change crisis, drought and famine, conflict, Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The war has especially wreaked havoc on the continent’s food security, due to disruptions in global supply chains pertinently in food, fuel and fertilizers. Food insecurity in the continent was already at an all-time high before the war, principally in the Horn of Africa due to the locust invasion which was climate-induced. The situation was worsened by the pandemic, but the war has caused a full-blown hunger crisis in many regions. Fertilizer shortages and their high prices thereof, continue to exacerbate the hunger quagmire.

According to the 2022 Global Report of Food Crises Mid-Year Update report, at least one in five Africans goes to bed hungry,…