Shiploads of rice bound for Africa have been stranded in gridlocked Asian ports
market was closed, all my knowledge was over,” sighs Brian Kayongo, a spare-parts trader from Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Until the covid-19 lockdown he spent most of his time in the city. He knew about spark plugs, not seeds. But now he is planting maize and beans on a patch of land he has rented in a nearby village. Everybody there is digging, he says. Even the young people who turned up their noses at farming have “surrendered” to the tyranny of the hoe.
Instead, covid-19 is hitting people’s pockets. In African cities the average household allocates half its expenditure to food. That budget has shrunk as economies nosedive and lockdowns close the informal businesses in which most workers hustle. Theestimates that 80m more Africans, mostly in cities, could see their incomes drop below the equivalent of $1.90 a day .
Hastily devised lockdowns are clogging up this system’s capillaries. Queues of lorries have jammed border posts and some local prices have spiked, perhaps because of hoarding. Governments designate food as an essential service, but security forces still beat up street vendors. Nigerian police have put up the bribes they extort from drivers. The Kenyan force has shot market traders. In Zimbabwe they have confiscated and burned produce, apparently to punish farmers for breaking a travel ban.
The strongest link is production itself: farmers can always keep digging. A few commercial operations, such as Ethiopian vegetable growers, are struggling to find workers. But there is no sign of a big labour shortage, as on west African farms when Ebola hit. Input markets are another matter. Narcis Tumushabe, the boss of one of Uganda’s biggest seed companies, says he has sold only a fifth of what he expected this season. “We may be forced to sell the seed as flour for food,” he warns.
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