Ban on rice export from India, fragile macroeconomic conditions may led to unprecedented food inflation in Middle East, North Africa
Photo: iStock Disruptions in the Black Sea grain route can worsen food insecurity in the Middle East (West Asia) and North Africa, according to a new report published by Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian aid organisation on September 24, 2023.
Many states in these two regions are experiencing severe food crises due to inability to afford food and exposure to the negative effects of conflict and trade dynamics in the Black Sea, the report stated.
Continuously decreasing levels of humanitarian funding allocations have exacerbated the crisis, it added.
The report focused on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq and occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank and Gaza) as well as North African states Tunisia and Egypt.
With an expanding population and growing demand for important food items, these countries were faced with food insecurity for decades, the authors of the report noted.
These factors have led several countries across the Middle East and North Africa heavily or partially dependent on imported grains, in particular those exported through the Black Sea, they wrote, adding:
This dependency came to the forefront in 2022 when grain shipments from Ukraine were at risk of being completely halted prior to the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) being struck.
Since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia blocked ports, restricting grain movement from Ukraine to the rest of the world.
BSGI, a deal brokered between the two countries by the United Nations and Turkey, allowed 32.9 million tonnes of food to be exported from war-torn Ukraine since it was signed on July 22, 2022.
But in July 2023, Russia refused to renew the initiative after it expired.
In July this year, India also banned rice export to protect local supply. The combined shocks may result in the beginning of an era of unprecedented food inflation in the Middle East and North Africa region, the report stated.
“Heavy dependence on imported foodstuffs, state fragility, political and economic obstacles, limited potential for domestic production and the absence of effective government-led mitigation measures are likely to exacerbate the impact of escalations in the Black Sea on Syria, Lebanon and Yemen,” wrote the researchers in the paper.
The occupied Palestinian Territories, Tunisia and Egypt have a historical dependence on grain exports from Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, the fragile macroeconomic environments have pushed up commodity prices in these places, making them vulnerable to Black Sea grain export disruptions, the authors stated.
“These countries were also severely impacted by the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as commodity price hikes caused by the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022,” they added.
The researchers called for aid actors to conduct robust contingency planning to account for the possibility of global food price shocks and grain shortages in the fragile contexts in which they work.
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