APA – Dakar (Senegal) – Vladimir Putin’s promise to African countries comes ten days after Russia’s decision not to renew the agreement on Ukrainian grain exports.
At the opening of the Russia-Africa summit on Thursday, July 27, the Russian leader pledged to provide free grain to six African countries where Moscow’s influence has grown in recent years.
“In the coming months, we will be able to deliver 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain free of charge to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic and Eritrea,” Putin said in a speech broadcast on Russian television.
Several African leaders, including Senegal’s Macky Sall, Assimi Goïta of and Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, are attending the meeting in St. Petersburg, in northern Russia. Colonel Goïta and Captain Traoré seized power in their countries by force before strengthening military and economic cooperation with Moscow.
President Putin’s promise comes ten days after his decision not to renew the agreement on Ukrainian grain exports in the midst of the war with Ukraine. Several observers around the world have suggested that Africa will suffer as a result of Moscow’s decision, even though the black continent is not the main beneficiary of Ukrainian grain.
This agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, has so far allowed Kiev to export 33 million tons of grain (wheat, corn, etc.) to the rest of the world, and to a lesser extent to Africa. Its goal is to avert a global food crisis by allowing Ukrainian agricultural products to be safely exported via the Black Sea, despite the conflict between the two former members of the Soviet Union.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Africa has received only 3.97 million tons of agricultural products from Ukraine as of June 26, 2023. Maize (1.79 million tons), wheat (1.7 million tons), barley (210,081 tons) and oilseeds (264,263 tons) are the main cereals imported from Kiev since then.
At the same time, China, the main destination for these products, received 7.7 million tons, almost double the amount destined for the African continent. The European Union (EU), for its part, “has bought back 50% of Ukraine’s grain shipments since the beginning of the conflict,” explained Olia Tayeb Cherif, research director at the Farm Foundation, a think tank on global agricultural issues.
There are even regional disparities in the distribution of these cereals across the continent. North Africa, for example, was the main beneficiary, receiving 3.12 million metric tons, or nearly 79% of total shipments to the continent. Egypt was the best served country, receiving 1.5 million metric tons of food, making it the fifth largest recipient in the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa received only 850,000 tons of Ukrainian grain products, and this share was mainly absorbed by the eastern part of the continent. This situation can be explained by the fact that the World Food Program (WFP) is implementing several aid operations in favor of communities threatened by famine and drought in the Horn of Africa, particularly in countries such as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
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