End of Black Sea grains deal promises pain for Africa's neediest
By Abdi Sheikh and Aaron Ross
MOGADISHU (Reuters) — Russia's announcement that it was withdrawing from a pact that allowed Ukrainian grains to leave Black Sea ports sent a shiver through poorer countries, many of which are already reeling from inflation, climate shocks and conflict.
The Black Sea grains deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022, helped bring down global food prices and allowed aid agencies to access hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food at a time of rising needs and scarce funding.
In Somalia's capital Mogadishu, wheat prices that had doubled when Russia invaded Ukraine fell by a quarter after the deal was signed. In the wake of Moscow's announcement, everyone from traders to bakers to victims of the country's armed conflicts and droughts was feeling a sense of dread.
«I don’t know how we will survive,» said Halima Hussein, a mother of five children who lives in a crowded Mogadishu camp for people displaced by years of failed rains and violence by Islamist militants.
«Aid agencies try their best to sustain our lives. They have very little to give,» she said.
Some traders in Mogadishu projected that a 50 kg bag of wheat grain could rise from the current $20 to nearly $30.
Korir Sing'Oei, the permanent secretary at the foreign affairs ministry in Kenya, which has also been contending with the Horn of Africa's worst drought in decades, said food prices that are already at historic highs would rise further.
«Commodities that used to cost say a pound or two will now cost four, the prices will just double,» he told Reuters.
Somalia received 84,000 tonnes of wheat from Ukraine in 2022, up from 31,000 tonnes in 2021, according to U.N. trade data, as donors stepped up assistance to fend
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