Nigeria: Families struggle to survive as food prices hike

With inflation rising around the world as the global economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, soaring prices are having dramatic consequences in countries like Nigeria.

The number of people living in poverty in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants – was already among the highest in the world.

But as Nigeria has been battered by the double economic effect of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates the country’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2021.

Food prices have increased more than 22 percent since the start of the coronavirus crisis, according to official statistics.

For many people, feeding their family has become a daily challenge.

Even before the pandemic and the surge in food costs, Nigeria’s nutrition figures were alarming: One in three Nigerian children suffered stunted growth due to a bad diet.

As a result, close to 17 million children in Nigeria are undernourished, giving the country the highest level of malnutrition in Africa and the second-highest in the world.

Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants, Nigeria competes with India for the largest number of poor in the world.

But battered by the double economic impact of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates Nigeria’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2020.

Food prices have increased more than 22 percent since the start of the coronavirus crisis, according to official statistics.

For many people feeding the family has become a daily challenge.

Nigeria’s inflation is not driven by global factors alone. Each year 40 percent of Nigeria’s total food production is lost or wasted, according to the World Bank.

In Africa’s largest oil producer, corruption is endemic, roads are in dire condition, the Lagos port is totally congested, and faulty electricity supplies do not allow food to be stored properly, economist Leye says.

Widespread bandit attacks, ethnic clashes and kidnappings for ransom in rural areas have added to a sense of “creeping insecurity”, which experts say has kept people from working in the fields in many agricultural regions of the country.

In the centre and the northwest, heavily armed criminal gangs terrorise local populations, looting villages, stealing livestock and kidnappings for ransom — even targeting schools and colleges for mass abductions.

Nigeria’s northeast has been at the heart of a deadly conflict between the army and jihadist groups for more than 10 years, forcing more than two million from their homes.

In these regions, the number of severely malnourished children is peaking, and in some areas has almost doubled in one year.

Lagos, the economic heart of the country, is hundreds of kilometres away.

But at traffic lights in the megalopolis, more and more children are from the north, clinging to car windows, their right hand outstretched towards the passenger. And the other brought to their mouths.