Alert on the yassa! Fight for the tiguè-digue! Jollof in danger! Africa has not finished noticing the effects of the war in Ukraine on price curves, and other disruptions are already looming. By negotiating, with Vladimir Putin, the release of stocks of cereals and fertilizers blocked since the start of his “special military operation” in Ukraine, did the current president of the African Union imagine, in June, that his weekend thieb might be threatened by more Eastern actors?…
The disturbing information came from India. After alerts in May, the huge South Asian country has just confirm the limitation of its rice supplies to Africain particular by banning the export of broken grains of this cereal popular with West Africans, and by introducing a 20% tax on exports of other types of high-quality rice.
An opportunity ?
Nothing to do, this time, with a conflict, even if New Delhi does not lack sources of tension with its neighbors. It is the effects of the drought that are forcing the world’s largest rice exporter to reduce foreign sales of its disrupted production. But nations like Senegal are largely dependent on this source of supply : over the 2021-2022 campaign, the Teranga country imported 1 million tonnes from India. In Benin, 75% of the rice consumed comes from the country of Mahatma Gandhi…
Unfortunately, the path to scarcity will be paved with scarcity which will maintain the current inflationary cycle… With the rise in the price of European wheat and Asian rice, the economic (war) or structural (climate) questions consumption habits, the advantage of having globalized tastes and the risk of long commercial circuits. Should Indian export restrictions be seen as an opportunity for Africa? A chance for dishes with more local ingredients, so-called “indigenous” vegetables and cereals – millet, fonio, teff or sorghum – or rice grown in Africa?