A cargo ship carrying the first batch of Russian fertilizers for Africa will arrive at the Mozambican port of Beira before the end of the year, after being forced to make a technical stopover in South Africa due to bad weather.

According to the port authorities of the South African city of Port Elizabeth, the MV Greenwich had to dock due to a storm and, in fact, the minimum length of stay was up to seven days, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS and quoted by Lusa.

However, the weather conditions have changed more than expected in the last few hours and the freighter could resume its journey with a view to arriving at the port of Beira, in Sofala Bay, on December 31.

The British-flagged MV Greenwich set sail from a New Zealand port on 29 November with the first shipment of Russian fertilizer scheduled to be delivered to the African continent since the war began in the last days of February.

As soon as the 20,000 tons of fertilizer from the Russian company Uralchem-Uralkali are unloaded at the port of Beira, the cargo will be transported by rail to Malawi, a landlocked country to the north of Mozambique.

Uralchem-Uralkali agreed in mid-November to export humanitarian shipments of fertilizer to the African continent that were blocked in warehouses in Belgium, the Netherlands and Estonia as part of the sanctions imposed on Russia in response to the war in Ukraine.

As announced by the United Nations, this first shipment of 20,000 tons of fertilizer is being transported by the MV Greenwich, a cargo ship chartered by the World Food Programme (WFP).

The shipment is the first in a series of deliveries of Russian fertilizers to African countries that were blocked at European ports and which have been donated by Uralchem-Uralkali.

In total, the donation amounts to 260,000 tons and, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres, it will help to "alleviate humanitarian needs and prevent a catastrophic loss of crops in Africa in the middle of the sowing season".

The initiative is part of the agreement that Ukraine and Russia sealed last July, with the support of Turkey and the UN, which also allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume via the Black Sea.

Although Western sanctions against Russia do not affect food and fertilizers, according to Moscow, its exports of this type of product have been practically paralyzed due to restrictions on logistics companies or difficulties in securing shipments.

The UN has been warning for months of the danger posed by the sharp rise in fertilizer prices since 2019, with an increase of 250%, making them unaffordable for many farmers in developing countries.

As a result, the UN fears that harvests will be damaged and a serious food crisis will result, especially in Africa.