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40 Middle East & Africa
2 trailers which would normally ferry ce-
ment in the other direction travel empty.
Bukola Osuntade of Babcock University in
Nigeria says some poultry farmers are
thriving, since most abattoirs for slaugh-
tering cows and goats have closed down.
Less fortunate are the petty traders who
carry food across African borders. On a nor-
mal day over 30,000 of them shuttle be-
tween Goma, in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, and Gisenyi, in Rwanda, lugging
sacks of potatoes and herding goats. Now
only lorries can cross. Enterprising traders
have clubbed together to hire them, but
must pay the taxes that they previously
dodged. Prices of rice, beans and foufou
(maize or cassava flour) on the Congo side
have doubled; bananas are going for three
times the usual rate.
Processors are stretched, too. Bernard
Wainaina, who manages a Kenyan flour
mill, describes an initial rush, then a sud-
den drop in demand. To maintain social
distancing he has sent half his workers
home. A survey of 106 food processors in
seven African countries by TechnoServe, a
non-profit in Washington, found that few- The parable of the
er than a third were operating with a full
staff. Over half had been hit by disrupted bag of cash
supplies of raw materials, packaging and
spares, and had distribution problems.
The strongest link is production itself:
farmers can always keep digging. A few
commercial operations, such as Ethiopian
vegetable growers, are struggling to find
workers. But there is no sign of a big labour Ihammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s phlegmatic
shortage, as on west African farms when
Ebola hit. Input markets are another mat-
ter. Narcis Tumushabe, the boss of one of
Uganda’s biggest seed companies, says he
has sold only a fifth of what he expected
this season. “We may be forced to sell the
seed as flour for food,” he warns.
The most vulnerable parts of Africa are
those already reeling from war, pests or
drought. “Covid-19 is like a crisis within a
crisis,” says Abebe Haile-Gabriel of the un’s urehead for a shadowy cabal that con-
Food and Agriculture Organisation. In east
Africa a plague of locusts that ravaged
crops earlier this year is returning, many
times bigger than before. Pesticides to fight
them have been delayed in transit.
The wfp says more than 5m people in
the central Sahel will go hungry in the com-
ing lean season. In Zimbabwe, cursed with
drought and recession, over a quarter of the
population get food handouts. In Uganda
rations for 1.4m refugees have been cut by
30%. The funding shortfall was not caused
by the pandemic, but shows what happens
when donors lose focus.
Away from crisis zones the threat is not
starvation, but a slow-burning struggle
which may last long after lockdowns are
lifted. More than 50m children in sub-Sa-
haran Africa are missing school meals (see
chart on previous page). As hardship bites,
many families will switch to less nutritious
diets,cuttingoutthingslikefruitandvege-
tables,orsimplyeatingless.ClaudeBahati,
a laid-off cleaner in Goma, gulps down wa-
ter every morning to fill his empty stom-
ach. “We used to eat twice a day, now we
only eat once,” he says. “If this confine-
ment continues then we will die.”
That need not happen. Most African
countries locked down early, so may be
able to ease up quickly. In the meantime
new initiatives are sprouting, from deliv-
ery apps connecting vendors with custom-
ers to an efflorescence of mutual aid. Mar-
kets are being redesigned. Traders’
associations, customs officials and Trade-
Mark East Africa, a donor-funded outfit in
Nairobi, are piloting “safe trade zones” at
borders, with temperature checks, masks
and sanitisers. Policymakers on the conti-
nentandbeyondshouldkeepfoodflowing.
They must not let an unprecedented shock
become a hunger crisis. 7
Abba Kyari
The Nigerian president’s influential
chief of staff succumbs to covid-19
t was a rare display of emotion by Mu-
president. In a written tribute to Abba
Kyari, his chief of staff, who died in Lagos
on April 17th after catching covid-19, Mr Bu- corrupt oil and gas industries by making
hari told of how his “dearest friend” of
more than 40 years tried to improve gover-
nance and reduce corruption in Africa’s
most populous country. He was “the very
best of us”, wrote the president.
While Mr Kyari was alive, others were
much less kind. Many saw him as the fig-
trolled policy and appointments, and
granted favours and contracts. Cabinet
ministers grumbled that they could not get
past his door to discuss important issues
with a distant and apathetic president. Mr
Kyari’s economic thinking, which seemed
stuck in the 1970s, was also criticised.
There was some truth to these accusa-
tions. Yet there is also a broader parable of
Mr Kyari. It is one of a largely honourable
man who went to the heart of a thoroughly
corrupt and dysfunctional system, aiming
to reform it—but who struggled to over-
come its inertia amid a series of crises.
Like his ascetic boss (pictured, seated),
Mr Kyari (standing) was a man of modest
habits, at least by the standards of Nigeria’s
elite. He was known to turn down offers of
free upgrades to first class (he thought it
vulgar) before taking his seat in business
class on British Airways flights. His weak-
The Economist April 25th 2020
nesses were for books on political econ-
omy and plates of well-done kippers at the
Dean Street Townhouse in London.
The corruption and decay of Nigeria’s
state, and the inequality they bred, dis-
mayed and worried him. Nigeria had to
change, he argued. The question was
whether it would be through orderly re-
form or chaotic breakdown.
When seeing your correspondent one
evening in Abuja, Mr Kyari pointed to a bag
stuffed with $100 bills. It had been “forgot-
ten”by an earlier visitor—the boss of an en-
ergy company—who sheepishly came to
collect it after getting an earful. “Much too
much of our work is spent on stopping our
own people stealing,” Mr Kyari said.
The chief of staff, who had studied law
at Cambridge University and been in
charge of a successful bank before Mr Bu-
hari hired him in 2015, thought the state
should play a big role in the economy. He
would speak fondly of British Rail in the
1970s before it was privatised (an era of
strikes and awful food, as Brits remember
it). And he clashed with the imf when it
urged Nigeria to liberalise its fixed ex-
change rates. But he was, in essence, a prag-
matist who thought ideology was a distrac-
tion from the bigger tasks of enforcing the
rule of law and improving governance.
He was also cursed with bad luck. Mr
Buhari took power after a crash in oil prices
that pushed the country into recession and
starved it of the money needed to fight the
jihadists of Boko Haram. Mr Kyari had
hoped that Mr Buhari’s second term would
provide an opportunity to liberalise the
contracts and licences more transparent
and taking them out from under the thumb
of politicians. Yet covid-19 may well dash
those plans, just as it has deprived Mr Bu-
hari’s administration of its rudder. 7
Friends to the end