A simple answer is climate change, Africa has in many parts become a lot dryer and causes drought in many high populated areas which has been essential farming regions.
The then the next question is why do we have a climate change right now, much of that has to be blamed on the industrial countries like USA, Europe, Russia, India, and China. For long times they have let pollution out into our atmosphere. A bit late and slowly Europe and USA has begun to try to limit their pollution, while countries like Russia and China do little about it even if they have the assets to become more environment friendly. Russia still dumps wastewater directly into the Baltic Sea. India do not really have the economical strength to move towards environment friendly production as the richer countries.
So why don’t the West and Russia send grain to Africa as they done before, this is a bit more tricky question to answer, mostly for there are so many misconceptions about the war in Ukraine. Lets anyhow dive into it, the war in Ukraine begun already in 2014 when Russia went into Crimea and Eastern Donbas, it took time for Ukraine to be able to stop the Russian onslaught and there were some private units created as the Azov Battalion. The whole war became a dragged out stalemate until the 24th of February 2022 when Russia started their so called special operation to eliminate the democratically elected government and put a Russian puppet in power.
Russia wasn’t prepared that the Ukrainians would defend them and that they were a lot better trained than back in 2014 and also had better weapons, this halted the attack on Kyiv. The Russians keep on targeting civilian infrastructure like grain silos, farms and farmland. Russia blocked all harbors in Ukraine so no ships could get out. This affects much on the export of grain to Africa as half of what is exported comes from Ukraine.
I know that many of you have read that there are Nazis in power in Ukraine, this is just a Russian fabrication, there are no Nazi sympathizers in the Ukrainian Rada while in Russia there are 22 openly Nazi representatives in the Duma and out over that 325 fascists.
The Azov Battalion has been blamed for being a bunch of Nazis, it’s true that back in the 2014 there was a high number of right wing radicals and Nazis in the Azov Battalion, but during the years it has been integrated into the UAF, this caused many of the Nazis to have to leave the unit, sure there are Ukrainian nationalists still in the ranks. Compare that with the Russian States private army usually called Wagner Group, which members to the majority are Nazis, both from Russia and abroad and they even committed atrocities and genocide in Mali, Syria, Ukraine, and other war zones.
I’m quite sure you will also blame NATO, it’s not much different from the African Standby Force (ASF), the aim with NATO is to protect it’s member states from war and in case a member state is attacked, the other members will provide support. NATO will not start a war, as it’s constitution do not allow it and all decisions made by NATO has to be unanimous. Sure NATO has taken part as peace keeping missions under UN flag in the same way as ASF do in many African countries. Sure we have seen USA start wars as those against Afghanistan and Iraq, but that ain’t sanctioned by NATO.
So NATO can’t become a threat to Russia unless Russia decides to attack a NATO member state and both Finland and Sweden are now feeling threaten by Russia and they will have a similar situation as Ukraine if they don’t join NATO and get 30 other states protection.
So the only reason why we see increase in food and gas prices is Russia or rather the leadership who thinks Russia still is a superpower like Soviet Union (that role has been taken over by China). Russia also thinks murdering, raping and stealing will make others to like them, they are not any better than the Europeans in Africa during the colonization era.
Sure you can still see racism how USA and Europe treat conflicts, but it’s always been easier to help those who look and think like you than others, but the sooner the war in Ukraine has come to an end, the sooner USA and Europe can help and hopefully they would also bring new opportunities, demand on organic gown produces will be high and there is a possibility that some manufacturing will be moved from China to Africa, but Africa has to be steadfast on that such production will be environment friendly and profits be taxed in Africa and not in Luxembourg.