Reply #7: FEATURE-Hungry crowds spell trouble for world leaders / Reuters By Tansa Musa

[Demeter]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L23502580.htm


YAOUNDE, April 1 (Reuters) - "Is it not said 'A hungry man is an angry man'?" commented Simon Nkwenti, head of a teachers' union in Cameroon, after riots that killed dozens of people in the central African country. It is a proverb world leaders might do well to bear in mind as their impoverished populations struggle with food costs driven ever higher by record oil prices, weather and speculators trading in local market places and on global futures exchanges. Anger over high food and fuel costs has spawned a rash of violent unrest across the globe in the past six months.

From the deserts of Mauritania to steamy Mozambique on Africa's Indian Ocean coast, people have taken to the streets. There have been "tortilla riots" in Mexico, villagers have clashed with police in eastern India and hundreds of Muslims have marched for lower food prices in Indonesia.

Governments have introduced price controls and export caps or cut custom duties to appease the people who vote for them, but on streets across Africa, those voters want them to do more. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable: most people survive on less than $2 a day in countries prone to droughts and floods where agricultural processes are still often rudimentary. For African households, even a small rise in the price of food can be devastating when meals are a family's main expense...



MARKET FORCES

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says staple food prices in some parts of Africa have risen by 40 percent or more in six months. And this on a continent where malnutrition rates in some areas regularly top emergency levels even in an average year...The rising food prices have affected both Africa's small middle-class, like consumers in resource-rich South Africa, and poorer people like Sanou, the trader in Ouagadougou. While famines like those witnessed in the 1980s are less common now thanks to aid and development programmes, there is the risk of a return to chronic inflation which could threaten the relative economic stability achieved by many African states.

GLOBAL ISSUES

There are several reasons for the spiralling cost of living. Record oil prices driven by strong demand and insecurity in major production areas have pushed up fuel pump costs, making anything that has to be transported to market more expensive. Rising consumption of livestock fodder and other foods by fast-expanding China and India, and the use of land and crops for biofuels have boosted demand. Erratic weather, perhaps due to climate change, has trimmed harvests in some growing regions.
Meanwhile, investment funds and other speculators have bet on prices to continue up in a self-fulfilling cycle.

Across the world, governments are facing the consequences...