The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being felt globally as disruption to supply from two of the world’s major exporters of wheat, maize, fuel and fertilizer is causing prices to soar.
New research by ActionAid finds that local communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are being disproportionately affected by price rises caused by the war in Ukraine.
Many local communities are paying double, triple, or in some cases four times what they were paying for food, fuel, and fertilizer before the war began. People living on the poverty line are already struggling with the consequences of climate change, Covid-19 and conflict, especially in countries in the Global South. Rapidly escalating prices are now putting the world on course for a global food crisis that threatens to be even more devastating, deadly, and longer-lasting than the food crisis of 2007-08, or the Covid-19 pandemic.