If we don’t feed the people, we feed the conflict”, says the insurer Allianz Trade in a study estimating that eleven countries, especially in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, present a high risk of social tensions due to soaring food prices.
“The global food price shock is of particular concern to countries that are net importers of food or certain foods that have become scarce due to the war in Ukraine, such as grains,” writes the insurer in a study published on Tuesday, according to Afp.
This food shock reduces access to resources “and might even lead to the fall of certain governments, as during the Arab springs”, warns the insurer, referring to the popular protest movements at the turn of the 2010s which were at the origin of the fall of several regimes such as in Tunisia and Egypt, one of the components of which was social misery.
At the time, food prices had increased by 50%, recalls Allianz Trade. However, the price of wheat is now above its 2012 level.
The insurer estimates that eleven States are particularly at risk of seeing social conflicts emerge in the coming years as a result. These are Algeria, Tunisia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, and Sri Lanka, the latter country already crossing its worst economic crisis since independence.
Other net food importing countries present, according to the insurer, a risk of social conflicts, but less high, such as Romania, Bahrain, or Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia and China are also in this category, but the risks of conflict are still a little lower there, having more solid financial backs.
The International Monetary Fund warned at the end of April of “the risk of social unrest” in sub-Saharan Africa due to soaring food prices, and the director of the Africa department Abebe Aemro Selassie told AFP that he was “worried” regarding the situation.
More or less violent protest movements broke out in 2008 in some thirty countries, notably in Senegal and Cameroon, as well as in the Maghreb and the Caribbean due to a sharp increase in the price of basic foodstuffs.
Sub-Saharan Africa imports 85% of its wheat consumption, with particularly high amounts in Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Mozambique, the Fund said in late April.
