Africa is facing a looming food crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 44 percent of its wheat is imported from the two countries from 2018 to 2020.
The Secretary-General of Caritas Internationalis – the confederation of Catholic relief and development agencies – says the situation is worst in the Horn of Africa and the arid Sahel region.
“In the Sahel region, more than 12.7 million people are exposed to a highly vulnerable situation of hunger as well as an exile from their rural homesteads,” said Aloysius John.
He also complained about the tendency for Africa to keep importing food from the West, and called for Indigenous solutions to the continent’s food crisis.
“Africa has been the dumping site for the surplus of the large-scale industrial production of food in the north,” he told.
“It has not only destroyed the local food supply chain, but it has also destroyed local traditional farming which needs immediate and quick attention,” he explained.