Zuma: Rising food prices a time bomb
Cape Town, South Africa
The rising cost of food is a time bomb that could result in uprisings, African National Congress president Jacob Zuma told the World Economic Forum on Africa on Thursday.
“The issue of food prices is actually a time bomb,” he told a plenary of the forum, which is being held in Cape Town.
“With those who have the budgets to adjust, [it] is one thing. But with those who have no money to buy at all, once the food price goes up, they are cut out, even from the possibility of buying food. Then you are sitting with a situation that an uprising would emerge.”
Individual governments cannot solve the problem of food insecurity, said Zuma. “We must have global solutions to global problems.” He said he did not think that there was much that governments could do. “I think the world organisations must do it.”
Zuma was speaking against the background of a global doubling in the price of wheat in the past year, and an almost 80% hike in the African and Asian staples maize and rice over the same period. Soaring food costs have already sparked riots in Egypt, Indonesia, Cameroon, Peru and Haiti.
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