SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Reuters - Rising hunger looms in Sudan, with little aid in sight
Reuters report that Sudan’s food supplies are at risk, citing economic, geopolitical and environmental causes.
With the costs of small bread loaves rising from 2 SDG in 2020 to 50 SDG today, the 56% of Sudan’s population below the poverty line - up from 43% in 2009 - are exposed to the Russia-Ukraine war, as both comprise 87% of Sudan’s imported wheat.
UN World Food Programme (WFP) deputy country director Marianne Ward attributed the WFP’s expansion to urban centres to “structural issues such as inflation (and) availability of foreign currency”.
Reuters note that inflation makes seeds, fertilisers and fuel unaffordable for farmers amid rising unrest in farming regions and rainfall either too scarce or heavy. UN agencies project that millet, wheat and sorghum yield swill be 30% lower than they were over the past five years, with Sudan facing its first sorghum deficit since “ravaging” droughts of the 1980s.