Food price hikes spark riots in Africa

Anger over high food and fuel costs has spawned a rash of violent unrest across the globe in the past six months. From the deserts of Mauritania to steamy Mozambique on Africa's Indian Ocean coast, people have taken to the streets. There have been "tortilla riots" in Mexico, villagers have clashed with police in eastern India and hundreds have marched for lower food prices in Indonesia. Governments have introduced price controls and export caps or cut custom duties to appease the people who vote for them, but on streets across Africa, those voters want them to do more. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable: most people survive on less than $2 a day in countries prone to droughts and floods where agricultural processes are still often rudimentary. For African households, even a small rise in the price of food can be devastating when meals are a family's main expense. "People have been driven to destruction because they no longer know what to do or who to talk to," said Ousmane Sanou, a trader in Patte d'Oie, one of the areas hit in February by riots in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou. "They understand it's the only way to get the government to change things. Prices must come down -- otherwise we're heading for a catastrophe." Over 300 people were arrested in some of the worst violence for years in normally calm, landlocked Burkina, prompting the government to suspend custom duties on staple food imports for three months -- measures some other countries have also taken. But unions have threatened to call a general strike in April unless prices fall further. Anger over rising prices also fueled violence in Mauritania late last year. And at least six people were killed when taxi drivers in Mozambique rioted over fuel prices in February. In Senegal, police raided a private television station on Mar. 30 after it repeatedly transmitted images of police beating demonstrators with electrified batons and firing tear gas during an illegal protest over high food prices in the capital Dakar. The poor country on Africa's west coast witnessed the worst rioting in more than a decade last year, as hundreds of youths smashed windows and burned tires in anger at high prices and government efforts to clear away street traders. The UN World Food Program (WFP) says staple food prices in some parts of Africa have risen by 40 percent or more in six months. And this on a continent where malnutrition rates in some areas regularly top emergency levels even in an average year. In Cameroon, a taxi drivers' strike over rising fuel costs -- caused by many of the same factors pumping up food prices -- triggered widespread rioting exacerbated by anger over the cost of food, high unemployment and plans by President Paul Biya to change the constitution to extend his 25-year rule. Government ministers said around 25 to 40 people were killed, although a human rights group put the toll at over 100. "We are frustrated. We are disgruntled," said Jean-Martin Tsafack, a 32-year-old law graduate who sells imported second-hand clothes in Cameroon's capital Yaounde. "Some of us have become hawkers, others truck pushers. Many girls who were my classmates in university have now become prostitutes just to have something to eat. Life is becoming unbearable," he said. At least a dozen protesters in the Ivory Coast were wounded during several hours of clashes with police on Mar. 31 as they demanded government action to curb food prices. "We have so far registered eight people wounded at the hospital in Yopougon and four others in Cocody," said Thomas Kacao of the Ivorian Consumers Association (ACCI), one of the civil society groups behind the march. The demonstrations took place in Cocody, where Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo has a residence, and in Yopougon, a thriving area for shopping and nightlife. Ivorian police used tear gas and batons to disperse protesters who were burning tires and overturning parked cars. At the height of the demonstration, before riot police started firing tear gas, IRIN saw around 1,500 protesters chanting "we are hungry" and "life is too expensive, you are going to kill us." "A kilo of beef has increased from $1.68 to $2.16 in just three days," one of the protesters, Amélie Koffi, told IRIN. "One liter of oil has increased from $1.44 to $2.04 in the same time." "We only eat once during the day now," said another protester, Alimata Camara. "If food prices increase more, what will we give our children to eat and how will they go to school?" Kacao said the ACCI has recorded an "unending" rise in the cost of basic foodstuffs over the last three months. Some goods have increased by as much as 30 percent and 60 percent from one week to the next. "When women go to the market they don't stop complaining about how much more expensive things have become," he said. "Today, with $4.80 they cannot buy enough food to feed even a family of five," Kacou complained. Marcellin Kpangui, who has formed a new civil society organization called No-to-the expensive-life, said the cause of the food price hikes in Cote d'Ivoire is rising petrol prices that are being passed on to consumers. "We have called on the government many times [to do something] but we have the impression that no-one wants to give a response on this issue," Kpangui said. IRIN's requests for comment from the Ivorian ministry of commerce, to which the Kpangui's NGO had addressed its criticisms, were declined. But a member of the commerce minister's cabinet told IRIN, "I think the government will intervene by making a television announcement to calm things down," he said. Yacouba Fandio, a taxi driver in Abidjan said he like many people in the city are interested in taking part in protests but have not done so so far. "Many times we hear that a protest will take part against the cost of living but it has been called off at the last minute. Next time a demo is called, the turn out will be so huge [the government] will have to listen," he said. The World Food Program says high global fuel prices coupled with an increased demand for food in wealthier Asian and Latin American markets and an increased demand for biofuel are behind food price rises around the world. So far the worst instability resulting from high prices has been felt in West Africa, which is where many of the poorest countries in the world are found. In Senegal and Mauritania the high price of imported wheat and rice products brought people onto the streets in late 2007. Protesters again clashed with police in the Senegal capital on Mar. 30, prompting the police to temporarily take a television broadcaster which was reporting on the clashes off the air. In Cameroon protests against food prices in late February turned violent and in Burkina Faso this year there have been food riots in all the major towns in the country in which hundreds of protesters have been arrested.