Mombasa, a ship with 30,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat has arrived in the Kenyan port: the fight against the food crisis

MOMBASA – The African countries south of the Sahara are currently experiencing the worst food crisis in decades. There are 146 million people, equal to almost a third of the population of the European Union, who are victims of high food insecurity and who need urgent humanitarian aid. An all-time high of 205 million people in 45 countries do not have enough food according to the latest United Nations report.

The program Grain from Ukraine. As part of the humanitarian project ‘Grain from Ukraine‘, a fifth vessel carrying 30,000 tons of Ukrainian grain has arrived in the Republic of Kenya. In the port of Mombasa, the ship was received today by the Vice President of the Republic of Kenya, Rigathi Gachagua, together with Christopher Fomunyoh, of the International Coordination Group for the Prevention of Hunger (ICGPH), and the ambassadors of the donor countries of the project. Italy also supported this expedition, together with the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations and the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

The African countries most affected by hunger. They are Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Conflicts remain the root cause of this silent pandemic, of worldwide hunger, with the knock-on effects of the war in Ukraine further exacerbating the hunger crisis, due to soaring prices of food, fuel and fertilizers, not to mention the extreme weather conditions, linked to the climate crisis, such as droughts and cyclones, which wipe out crops. In short, the worst crisis in living memory is hitting Africa and eastern Africa in particular right now. A state of affairs which basically, but not so basically, also has a lot to do with the global “violence of privileges”, to use the words of Carlo Levi.