The World Bank announced Wednesday that it will release $30 billion to prevent food insecurity, as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which supplies 30% of the world's grain, has caused shortages and price hikes.

In this sense, according to RFI, the World Bank also clarified that $18 billion will be used immediately to implement support plans, particularly on the African continent, where the consequences of the conflict are strongly felt in terms of rising living costs.

"Rising food prices have had devastating effects on the poorest and most vulnerable" World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement, stressing that "to inform stabilizing markets, it is crucial that countries make clear statements now about future production increases in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

Mozambique, a country very permeable to fluctuations in cereal prices and where the slightest increase in the value of bread is problematic, has been one of the points in the world directly affected by food shortages and price increases. Luís Muchanga, executive coordinator of UNAC, the National Farmers Union of Mozambique welcomes the World Bank's decision.

"If this aid is geared towards supporting public policies so that countries have the domestic capacity to produce food and feed their people, for us, that's the vision that has to make sense. Especially because this model of international shocks ends up testing to what level we have a sovereign capacity to feed our own people. We have to use this as a moment to be able to guarantee that public policies can be more progressive, more efficient, and that countries can feed their own people," he considers.

Giving an account of the situation experienced by his country since the Russian forces invaded Ukraine about three months ago, causing a partial paralysis of the grain supply chains worldwide, Muchanga states that "all indicators point to a worsening of prices, pointing to some food shortages. Only in the last few years, the information that comes out indicates that, in fact, prices will increase at the market level".

"Also the purchasing power is not so high to be able to cope with that. So this blockage affects us directly and these three months are also the result of that. Again, this is proof that we need to strengthen ourselves internally. The last three months have been a suffocation and this could get worse if the situation stays as it is," Muchanga points out.

Therefore, in an already difficult context, India's recent decision to block its exports of wheat, of which it is the world's second largest producer, even though the bulk of its production is for domestic consumption, sounds like a negative signal from the point of view of UNAC's executive coordinator. 

"In principle, countries are sovereign, they can make their own decisions. But if the decisions start to affect the outside, this also has to be taken into account. It doesn't seem to me to be humanism, this attitude. You have to look at the moment and realize that the world is not homogeneous. There are differences in terms of production capacity. It has to be understood above all that the availability of food is a Human Right. It is true that we are not demanding India to take responsibility for our inability to produce the products internally, but it is also not the moment for that country to take a decision of this nature," says Luís Muchanga.