Former President, John Dramani Mahama has stated that blaming Russia and Ukraine for Africa’s hunger is unjustified. The World Bank recently stated that the world is facing a “human catastrophe” as a result of the food crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Africa cannot blame the current Russia-Ukraine conflict for the continent’s hunger,” Ghana’s former president John Mahama stated.
“It’s absurd to imply there’s a Russia-Ukraine war causing starvation in Africa. Why should the Ukraine war be an issue for us, given the kind of land, water, and sunlight we have here?” Mahama told Uganda’s NBS Television.
“Every country and continent must capitalize on its comparative advantages.
We need to use all of our comparative advantages. Sunlight, water, arable land, and natural resources are all available to us. He told host Samson Kasumba, “That’s what God blessed us with.”
Warning
According to World Bank President David Malpass, the world is facing a “human catastrophe” as a result of the food crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with BBC economics editor Faisal Islam, Malpass, who heads the organization in charge of global poverty eradication, warned that if the crisis continues, record increases in food costs will force hundreds of millions of people into poverty and lead to poor nutrition.
“It’s a human crisis, which means food is scarce.” But it becomes a political headache for governments that can’t do anything about it, didn’t cause it, and see prices rising,” he said on the margins of the IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington.
According to the World Bank, food prices might rise by 37 per cent, which would be “magnified for [the] poor,” who will “eat less and have less money for anything else, such as schooling.” As a result, it’s a particularly unjust form of catastrophe. It is more severe among the poor. That was likewise true of COVID.”
“It’s influencing the food of all various sorts of oils, grains, and then it spreads into other crops, maize crops because they go up when wheat goes up,” he explained.
He claimed that there was enough food in the world to feed everyone, and that worldwide stockpiles were huge by historical standards, but that the food would have to be shared or sold to get it to where it was needed.
Malpass also warned against countries subsidizing production or setting price ceilings.
However, he argued, the focus should be on increasing global fertiliser and food supplies, as well as targeted help for the world’s poorest people.
The World Bank chief also warned of a knock-on “crisis within a crisis” arising from the inability of developing countries to service their large pandemic debts, amid rising food and energy prices.
“It’s a very real possibility.” It’s already happening in several nations, and no one knows how far it will spread. “Right now, 60 per cent of the world’s poorest countries are either in debt trouble or on the verge of becoming so,” he said.
“We must be concerned about a debt crisis; the best thing to do is to begin looking for measures to lower the debt load for countries with unsustainable debt as soon as possible; the longer you wait, the worse it will become,” he added.