Posted on April, 9, 2024 at 08:34 am
Northern Ethiopia currently faces a severe food shortage. A drought has stricken the region, disrupting livelihoods, crops, and livestock. High food prices, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, have reduced everyday purchasing power. Meanwhile, armed conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Force and militia groups is hindering the delivery of aid. The situation has compelled USAID to write that Ethiopia faces a crisis “or worse” levels of food insecurity.
But another compounding factor exists more than 1,500 miles away: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Prior to the war, Ethiopia imported 301,000 tons of wheat from Ukraine, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. While Ukrainian wheat is not a majority of Ethiopia’s food source, the disruption of shipping routes on the Black Sea, coupled with other constraints, makes a fragile situation even more perilous.
Similar situations are playing out across the world in places that rely on maritime trade routes for their food and energy security. Today, three major trade routes face simultaneous disruptions due to geopolitical and environmental shocks.
“Today there are three routes that are of concern,” said Maximo Torero, chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization in a recent interview. “Of course, the Black Sea … the second one is the Red Sea, and the third one is the Panama [Canal].”
Each of these routes enables food delivery from one part of the world to another, helping to sustain international commerce and humanitarian aid deliveries. The disruptions come as some 783 million people face chronic hunger worldwide and food prices remain stubbornly high.
“Disruptions to major agricultural shipping routes are affecting food trade generally and all trade broadly,” Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an email to Devex.
Delayed shipments, increased risk during transport, and higher costs are affecting humanitarian operations, Welsh said. They are also creating opportunities for other players to step in and fill the void, evincing how food aid is inextricably linked to larger geopolitical battles.
Each shipping route faces a unique set of challenges.
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine accounted for 10% of global wheat exports, and 96% of its agricultural products were exported via Black Sea ports. Several of those ports were blocked or destroyed at the outset of the war. The Black Sea Grain Initiative unblocked some from July 2022 until July 2023, when Russia terminated the agreement. While alternative trade routes have emerged, increased insurance prices, threats of attacks, and longer sailing routes have kept prices high and the supply chain at risk.
Meanwhile, since November, Houthi separatists in Yemen have attacked ships in the Red Sea with drones and missiles. Major shipping companies have stopped using the Red Sea, through which almost 15% of global seaborne trade usually passes. Ships are instead sailing around southern Africa, a longer trip that uses more fuel and drives up costs.
Finally, a prolonged drought in the Panama Canal has reduced the number of ships able to pass through its locks. The past decade was among the driest on record for Lake Gatún, the reservoir used to raise ships above sea level, according to Gregory Tomlin of the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. The Panama Canal Authority envisioned 40 ship transits per day passing through its locks, yet 2024 began with only 18 ships passing daily. Ships are now sailing alternative routes, which means longer voyages that add time, costs, and fuel.
The stressed shipping routes compound an already fragile food ecosystem, delaying food aid shipments and threatening to worsen food insecurity worldwide.
Ukrainian exports have shifted more to Europe and less to Africa and Asia, according to a white paper authored by Welsh and Joseph Glauber of CSIS. Wheat exports from Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa have decreased from 10% to 3%, and exports to Southeast Asia have decreased from 30% to 12%.
The costs of delivering aid have also increased.
“The cost of humanitarian operations was $28 million higher per month in late 2022 than before Russia’s invasion,” Welsh told Devex. She predicted that as disruptions to shipping routes continue, the costs of assistance delivery will remain elevated. “Without increased support from donors,” Welsh said, “aid agencies will reach smaller proportions of the populations requiring humanitarian assistance.”
Yet not all the research points to such a precise cause and effect. In Ethiopia, for example, the African Economic Research Consortium concluded in October 2023 that the war in Ukraine had, to that point, only a marginal effect on food insecurity and poverty. Incidences of poverty increased by one percentage point, and the higher costs of food reduced the average household income by 0.86%.
Meanwhile, “Africa has never really been the target consumer for Ukrainian grain,” Nigerian journalist Olatunji Olaigbe argued in Foreign Policy. Olaigbe pins persistent food insecurity on larger, more systemic issues such as climate change, corruption, and inflation. “Food aid and importation have been a Band-Aid for much deeper problems,” Olaigbe wrote.
Olaigbe further suggested that the narrative of shipping routes causing food insecurity in Africa was a tactic to counter Russia’s growing influence on the continent. Indeed, one effect of the Black Sea shipping disruptions has been Russia increasing its food aid to Africa, capitalizing on Ukraine’s limitations during wartime.
At a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg last year, Russia promised free grain to six African nations, part of Russia’s strategy to use food as a kind of silent weapon in its war with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he intends to replace Ukrainian grain with Russian grain, particularly for lower-income countries.
Russia’s actions underscore a key lesson from the current disruptions: constraints on existing routes create opportunities for new players to step in and seize new routes, advancing their geopolitical objectives in the process.
In the African context, Russia and China have increased their development activities as part of larger strategic priorities on the continent. As well, the African Economic Research Consortium found that the current port disruptions offered Kenya and Ethiopia a greater opportunity to trade with each other, as opposed to relying on foreign partners. In Europe, countries such as Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey have expanded capacity to supplement the disruptions in Ukraine. When one route is closed, opportunistic players can find another route.
This also comes with consequences, though, as Welsh cautions.
“Reliance on alternate trade routes congests shipping lanes and ports not necessarily equipped to handle consistently high volumes,” Welsh told Devex. “Local economies dependent on typical port traffic can also suffer,” she added.
Countries can try to guard against shocks by diversifying their supply chains and cultivating a greater range of partnerships. But tackling food insecurity goes beyond restoring global shipping lanes. Doing so would likely bring down costs. But larger, more systemic issues would remain, including climate change, corruption, and armed conflict.
Shocks to the Red Sea, Black Sea, and Panama Canal may be destabilizing around the edges, but the deeper destabilizations are decades in the making. Disadvantaged populations around the world will continue to suffer so long as the larger systemic issues remain unresolved.
Source: Devex