Cameroon Blames Wheat Shortage on Russia-Ukraine War

Cameroon’s government on Monday blamed Moscow’s latest war with Kyiv for a preexisting nationwide wheat shortage, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

“Cameroon’s government says Russia’s war on Ukraine is responsible for a wheat shortage that has led to a 40 percent increase in the price of bread. The central African state is encouraging local substitutes like cassava and yams to replace the wheat usually imported from Russia and Ukraine,” VOA, a U.S. government-funded broadcaster, relayed.

According to VOA’s report on March 21, “Cameroon produces less than one-fourth of the 1.6 million tons of wheat it needs each year. Last year, it imported more than 850,000 tons from Russia and Ukraine.”

Africanews reported on Cameroon’s wheat shortage due to a price surge of the commodity on February 9, or 15 days before Russia’s military invaded Ukraine on February 24. Thus Cameroon’s latest cereal crisis was already a problem more than two weeks before the latest conflict between Moscow and Kyiv broke out.

Africanews reported at the time:

Wheat prices have spiked in Cameroon. On Wednesday [February 9], the association of millers announced it suspended deliveries of flour and wheat bran throughout the country. Even [t]he bakers’ syndicate said it won’t be able to cope with production costs.

“Every year, a price rise hits us”, Lucas Yimgue explains. The member of the bureau of the Employers syndicate of Cameroon’s bakers describe[s] a rise that becomes hard to sustain: “This time a 3,000-franc rise is looming. The price of a bag of flour is up to 22,500 CFA francs from 19,500 francs; the cost has almost doubled. Since the price of bread won’t budge, it will be very hard on us bakers. If the government doesn’t help us; we will be obliged to close down.”

The February 9 Africanews article also mentioned the Cameroonian government’s push for residents to use “wheat substitutes like cassava.”

Africanews is operated by Euronews, which itself is owned by several state-run broadcasters across North Africa and Europe.

World wheat prices rose by five percent in October 2021 compared to the previous month, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported.

The FAO, which operates a Food Price Index, said wheat’s global price jump at the time was attributable to “tightening global availabilities due to reduced harvests in major exporters, including Canada, the Russian Federation and the United States of America. International prices of all other major cereals also increased month-on-month.”

Russia was the world’s top exporter of wheat in 2020 while Ukraine was the globe’s fifth-largest exporter of the cereal crop that same year. Russia also ranked as the third-largest producer of wheat worldwide in 2020.

Cameroon is among several nations that rely heavily upon both Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports for their domestic cereal supply. The other countries include: Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon, and Israel.