LONDON - Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has driven a surge in the price of essentials such as food, fuel and fertiliser across the globe, [and] the human cost has been especially high in more vulnerable African economies such as Malawi, reports the Financial Times.
"You really are talking about things [coming] to a head," President Lazarus Chakwera told the Financial Times. The result, says the International Energy Agency, is that by the end of this year up to 30 million Africans may no longer be able to afford liquefied petroleum gas to cook the food they eat. Such a development would mark an economic regression that the World Bank has said may raise the total number of Africans living in extreme poverty from 424mn before the pandemic in 2019 to 463mn this year.
Many African economies have been hit particularly hard by the global rise in prices because food takes up a relatively larger share of national inflation baskets compared with developed economies, [Jacques Nel, head of Africa macro at Oxford Economics Africa] added. Food, for example, accounts for about half of Nigeria's basket. FT