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War had just broken out in Ukraine, and Russia was using food as a bargaining chip. We go behind the scenes of a battleground deal that allowed cargo ships to move safely from blockaded ports on the Black Sea.
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Also in today’s edition: Humanitarian aid is not reaching Tigray as the government imposes another blockade amid intensified fighting in northern Ethiopia, and Ukraine sends an official to Africa to drum up support.
The hunt for bread October
As cargo ships clogged the Black Sea ports of Ukraine and boatloads of goods remained anchored in harbors worldwide, a food crisis was on the horizon. If the vessels didn’t set sail to meet their contracted destinations soon, a wave of food inflation, hunger, and potentially starvation could threaten global stability.
The deal my colleague Colum Lynch uncovered was right out of a spy novel.
Just weeks after Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine, a former World Food Programme official, who now works for a little-known private mediation firm, heard about a boatload of tea stuck in the port of Mombasa. It couldn’t move because Russia had blockaded the Black Sea to commercial shipping.
Sitting in his hotel room in Nairobi, Richard Wilcox had a plan. He penned an urgent memo to his people back home in Geneva with an outline of what would form part of the landmark Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by the United Nations, which restored millions of tons of grain to the world market.
He proposed a protected shipping lane — “blue corridors” — that would allow vessels to weave through the murky depths seeded with defensive mines to free up grains and other foodstuff. In exchange for suspending the blockade, Russia would gain assurances it could export wheat and fertilizer unhindered by Western powers.
The missive reached U.N. chief António Guterres and the wheels, or in this case rudders, began to move.
Read more: Inside the UN's high-stakes deal to open Ukraine's grain corridor (Pro)
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Expert witnesses
“Unless we build a better food system, we're never going to stop these crises from happening. This is the second food crisis in about 10 years.”
— Julian Lampietti, practice manager for agriculture and food, World BankMy colleague Shabtai Gold takes you inside the World Bank’s thinking on the food crisis with a Q&A with Lampietti and his co-worker Madhur Gautam, the bank’s lead agriculture economist. They detail why food crises might become more frequent, what the bank is doing now — and some of the “silly things” governments shouldn’t do to try to fix the problem.
World Bank: "We're nowhere near out of the woods" on food price crisis (Pro)
+ Track how business, social enterprise, and development finance leaders are tackling global challenges by signing up for Devex Invested — our free, must-read Tuesday newsletter.
Ukraine’s goodwill tour
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has beamed virtually onto some of the biggest global stages, drumming up support for his defensive battle against Russia.
Now his government is turning its attention to sub-Saharan Africa, where Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will soon conduct an “extensive” tour to share their common cause and “define their own destiny,” according to one Ukrainian official.
Food shortages exacerbated by Russia’s invasion have hit Africa particularly hard. Meanwhile, the West has charged Vladimir Putin with using hunger as a weapon, targeting Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, and hindering access to Black Sea ports, writes my colleague Vince Chadwick.
Unlike the U.S. and Europe, some African leaders have been slow to condemn Putin’s invasion — a neutrality born of years of close relations with Russia and lingering bitterness at the West’s legacy of colonization.
But Ukraine hopes to win over reluctant African leaders. Details of Kuleba’s trip have not been revealed, but the idea is to establish ties where it has no diplomatic presence, a Ukrainian official said in Brussels this week.
Kuleba’s visit is crucial. European Union diplomats in Addis Ababa, the home of the African Union, wrote a candid, confidential report in July, obtained by Devex, which noted that many African states “do not identify an interest in taking sides in what they perceive as an ‘East-West’ conflict” in Ukraine.
Read: Ukrainian FM readies sub-Saharan Africa tour amid battle of narratives
Related: Ukraine farmers on the front lines of a war fueling global food crisis
+ Catch up on all our coverage of the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.
‘Square one’
Fighting has erupted again in Ethiopia, hobbling aid distribution in Tigray. People are dying and food and medicines are not getting through.
“We’re back to square one,” says Michael Dunford, regional director for eastern Africa at the World Food Programme. There is now “virtually no access and hence no humanitarian support going into Tigray.”
The long-fought truce collapsed as Ethiopian state troops battled rebels in the north, prompting the government to impose another de facto blockade of aid, writes my colleague Sara Jerving.
Progress was made during the truce, “but it was far from perfect, Dunford said during a conversation hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But those gains have now “evaporated,” he said.
Read: WFP regional director says "virtually no aid access in Tigray"
ICYMI: Russia, China foiled UN meetings on Tigray famine, says Lowcock
WFP gives and gives
The World Food Programme is big: My colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan describes it as a “behemoth,” second only to UNICEF in the United Nations system. And the fact that it spends a lot of money is hardly surprising given the help it’s had to distribute recently.
Miguel trawled through the numbers in the U.N.’s annual statistical report and found that Turkey was the biggest recipient, with $463.5 million, or 10% of the total cash spent on major contracts in 2021. Yemen was second with $226.3 million.
You’ll be surprised though which country — one of the richest in the world — came in third.
Read: The World Food Programme's top suppliers in 2021 (Pro)
+ Devex Pro members can also read our data analysis on food aid and learn what impact it’s had on hunger globally. Not yet gone Pro? Sign up and start your 15-day free trial to read the piece and more.
Thinking COP
We’re just five weeks from the 27th U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP 27, and the climate gabfest promises to be contentious. While the handshakes and smiles will be cordial and diplomatic, expect some fierce discussion and considerable finger-pointing.
There are some pretty angry countries. Pakistan is still cleaning up after apocalyptic flooding killed at least 1,500 and swept away millions of homes and livestock. High-income countries pledged in Paris to fork over $100 billion a year to help low- and middle-income countries weather climate change — money that has yet to materialize.
Egypt set out its vision for the November conference and urged immediate action. In a statement, COP 27’s presidency underscored its agenda would push for loss and damage funding and that financial commitments and adaptation goals are met and increased.
”There can be no room for delay in the fulfillment of climate pledges or backtracking on hard earned gains in the global fight against climate change,” says Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian minister of foreign affairs and COP 27 president-designate. “We must work together for implementation. We need to act, and act now, to save lives and livelihoods.”
ICYMI: Former UNFCCC chief Espinosa on what it will take for COP 27 to succeed
In other news
UNICEF condemned an attack on a Kabul educational center that claimed the lives of dozens of children on Friday. [Twitter]
The president of Mexico has announced the country's intention to nominate Alicia Barcena as the new head of the Inter-American Development Bank. [Reuters]
Pakistan's minister is appealing for climate justice in the form of compensation from the global north and other high-income nations. [Nikkei]
According to a Global Witness report, deaths of environmentalists worldwide decreased slightly from 2020 to 2021, but Mexico became the “deadliest country for environmentalists.” [Deutsche Welle]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
