Hope Rises for Nigeria as Putin Agrees to Free Up Ukrainian Grain Exports

The federal government had recently lamented that the war was causing another wave of global economic distortion reflecting in the cost of food and fertiliser in the country.
Aside grains export from Ukraine, Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said that as a fertiliser-producing country, it has been tough getting potash, a key ingredient in the production of the agricultural commodity, which had led to skyrocketing prices.

“For Nigeria as a producer of fertiliser, one of the major inputs for fertiliser production, potash, is also affected. Now it is scarce and that means that the input is very expensive and we are seeing that reflecting in the cost of fertiliser,” she said.

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But in April, Nigeria bought emergency supplies of potash after the country was unable to import the key fertiliser ingredient from Ukraine-Russia due to the impact of the invasion.

However, during a meeting with the Chairperson of the African Union (AU), Senegal’s President Macky Sall, Putin told the representative of African leaders that he was ready to enable the export of Ukrainian grain to ease a global food crisis that is hitting Africa especially hard.

“President Putin has expressed to us his willingness to facilitate the export of Ukrainian cereals,” Sall wrote on Twitter after meeting Putin in his role as chairman of the AU.
Russia was also ready to ensure the export of its own wheat and fertiliser, Sall said, according to Reuters, after the talks in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Sall did not say if Putin had attached any conditions to his offer, but Russia had previously said it is ready to allow vessels carrying food to leave Ukraine in return for the lifting of some Western sanctions against it, a proposal that Ukraine has described as “blackmail”.

Africa is heavily dependent on grain supplies from Russia and Ukraine that have been badly disrupted by the war.
“I have come to see you, to ask you to be aware that our countries, even far from the theatre (of war), are the victims of this economic crisis,” Sall told Putin earlier.