The African continent must prepare for an impending global crisis, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina warned last Friday. Adesina warned that to avoid a food crisis, Africa must rapidly expand its food production.

"The AfDB is already working to mitigate the effects of an inevitable global food crisis through the African Food Crisis Response and Emergency Facility by providing African countries with the resources needed to increase local food production and purchase fertilizers," Adesina said, speaking at a debate on the continent's priorities organized by the Atlantic Council's Africa Center.

The official called for a greater sense of urgency in what he sees as a convergence of global challenges.

"My basic principle," Adesina said, "is that Africa should not be begging. We should solve our own challenges without depending on others."

The AfDB President said that the continent's most vulnerable countries are under conflict, suffer more from climate change, and have been prevented from improving their economies by the pandemic of covid-19. He recalled Adesina that covid-19 has eliminated about 30 million jobs and has led African countries to record the lowest rates of Gross Domestic Product.

On the occasion the official compared the impacts of the current crisis in Eastern Europe that has already caused the price of wheat to rise by about 50%, just as it did with the 2008 world food crisis.

He added that fertilizer prices had tripled, and energy prices had increased, which contributed to rising inflation.

It noted that 90% of Russia's $4 billion exports to Africa in 2020 were wheat; and 48% of Ukraine's nearly $3 billion exports to the continent were wheat and 31% corn.