00:00 week the Black Sea grain deal ended pushing some African countries closer to
00:05 food insecurity. But should you and your family be worried about getting enough
00:10 food to put on the table? Welcome to the flip side. The grain deal allowed Ukraine
00:19 to export agricultural products by sea and according to the United Nations
00:23 under this deal Ukraine managed to export nearly 33 million tons of grain
00:29 and oil seeds. And the effect to go straight to your question on the
00:36 African countries again will be low because as we know only 10% of the grain
00:43 was coming to the African countries and that means that definitely we have our
00:50 only 24% of the continent that was not dependent on this deal. The main
00:54 beneficiaries of this deal were China, Spain, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands
00:59 and clearly the Black Sea grain deal was not going to solve the continent's
01:04 running food insecurity challenges. Even before the Ukraine crisis, countries on
01:10 the edge of the Sahara were suffering because of extreme weather conditions
01:14 and climate change. Countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria as well as
01:20 Kenya, Somalia and others. Because of climate change the temperature is
01:25 increasing and we see more unpredictable rainfall patterns and these of course
01:31 affect crop yields and when crop yields are affected supply falls, then prices
01:36 rise and higher prices contribute to food insecurity. And we need to invest in
01:42 innovation that take these commodities and give us products that we are looking
01:47 for anyway in other commodities that we import. So increasing the place of cassava, the place of
01:54 millet, in wheat, in bread that we use wheat for or in other products that we
02:03 use wheat for is something that is beginning to happen and is something
02:06 that countries should double down on. But the irony is that there is enough food being
02:12 produced so the real problem isn't production but access. In the meantime
02:17 there are alternatives to wheat flour like cassava, maize or millet but on a
02:23 broader scale until the problems of climate change are recognized and
02:28 distribution bottlenecks are resolved, the Black Sea grain deal and similar
02:33 ones will do very little to address the hunger problem on the continent. And that
02:40 That is the flip side.
02:41 (upbeat music)
