ActionAid Zimbabwe has called on President Emmerson Mnangagwa to take policy measures to subsidise food accessibility to low-income citizens.
The humanitarian organisation made the call amid increase in food prices as a result of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
In a statement by all 19 country directors of ActionAid in Africa, the organisation noted that half the grains distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) through its food support programmes in Africa comes from Ukraine and Russia.
Data from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) shows that Russia and Ukraine are among the most important producers of agricultural commodities in the world and both countries play leading supply roles in global markets of foodstuffs and fertilisers.
The UN agency also noted that Least Developed Country (LDC) and Low-Income Food-Deficit Country (LIFDC) groups that rely on Ukrainian and Russian food supplies to meet their consumption needs are grappling with the negative effects of high international food and fertiliser prices.
‘The government must increase social protection safety nets and other measures to improve the income of people in urban and rural areas to cope with the increasing food prices’, the statement read.
‘The government must invest in building national food reserves to act as buffers and reduce vulnerability to food shortages and price rises.
‘The government should scale up support to smallholder farmers, especially women smallholders and sustainable agroecological approaches to farming, so farmers can improve soil fertility for crop production, without the use of expensive fossil-fuel chemical fertilizers’.
ActionAid, according to the statement, has documented 100 million low-income urban dwellers who are hard hit by the rising food prices, many of them women-headed households.
Food inflation in Zimbabwe is expected to be 78.00 percent by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations.
Additional data from Trading Economics reveals that cost of food in Zimbabwe increased 69.30 percent in February of 2022, over the same month in the previous year.
The southern African country’s economy was already battling high inflation before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Source: ActionAid Zimbabwe
Photo source: Paul Kagame
