By Javier Blas in Addis Ababa
Thursday Apr 3 2008
SourceRising food prices could spread social unrest across Africa after triggering riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, African ministers and senior agriculture diplomats have warned.
Kanayo Nwanze, the vice-president of the United Nations' International Fund for Agriculture, told a conference in Ethiopia that food riots could become a common feature, particularly after the price of rice has doubled in three months.
"The social unrest we have seen in places such as Burkina Faso, Senegal or Cameroon may become common in other places in Africa," Mr Nwanze said.
He added that some African countries would struggle with rice prices, which last week hit a high of $760 a tonne, up from $373 a tonne in early January, as they have yet to make any purchases for this year. Some are said to have been waiting for prices to drop.
Toga McIntosh, Liberia's minister of economic affairs, added that social tension in several nations was a wake-up call for the region.
"Looking at past experiences, whenever we have seen crisis in one area [it] is a signal for other [countries] to set safety valves [to avoid propagation]," Mr McIntosh said.
African countries are slashing import tariffs on foodstuffs, lowering taxes and increasing subsidies in an effort to keep local prices low.
Ministers and food diplomats met this week in Addis Ababa to discuss the impact of surging food prices during a conference of African Union finance ministers.
While ministers said not all social unrest was caused by food prices they did acknowledge that it was a powerful trigger for recent unrest.
The concern about riots is based at least partly on the fact that Africa more than any other continent depends on costly food imports. Hunger is hitting the more politically sensitive urban areas, rather than the countryside.
Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the UN's World Food Programme, told the conference that Africa was witnessing a "new face of hunger - more urban".
"Now it is clear to everyone that we are not facing just a short-term problem but a structural change in the price of food, there is no such thing as normal prices any more."
Africa has suffered severe famines in the past, including the one in Ethiopia in 1984 that killed more than 1m, but it is the first time the problem is rising prices rather than a lack of food.
Because food represents a larger share of what the poorest consumers buy, a global increase in food prices has a bigger impact in Africa than in other emerging areas such as south-east Asia.
The cereal imports bill for the continent's poor countries is forecast to surge this year to $15.2bn (€9.7bn, £7.67bn), up 49 per cent from last year and more than double the $6.5bn of five years ago, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Food prices are rising on a mix of strong demand, a rising global population, more frequent floods and droughts, and the biofuel industry's appetite for grains, analysts say.
Producing countries' export bans are also pushing up prices. Joachim von Braun, the director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, told the conference that those measures were "starve your neighbour policies".