Will Putin's Ukraine War Provoke Famine and Upheaval in Africa ?

Abstract

Famines are almost always man-made often used as a deterrent. Since ancient times, food and hunger have been a weapon of war. Among the most notorious examples in Africa are the Herero and Namaqua genocide in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1904 to 1908. It was the first genocide of the 20th century. Also, the subsequent famines in Biafra (South-East Nigeria, 1967-1969), when an estimated 1.5 million people starved to death, the 1980 famine in Uganda, one of the worst in African history, when 21% of the population died, and the recurring famines in Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan since the 1990s have been burned into human memory. The use of food as a weapon was condemned as a war crime by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. Since most African countries are Least Developed Countries (LLCs), they will suffer the hardest in the aftermath of Putin's war in Ukraine, especially Africa's poor. They have already suffered the consequences of drought, the corona pandemic and Islamist terrorism.