Between the turmoil in the fertilizer market, El Niño's grip on Asian and Latin American harvests, and the stalemate of the Black Sea corridors, the reality imposes itself with the force of a guillotine. The planet's breadbasket is once again unsteady, carrying sugar, cereals and dairy products toward worrying heights in its wake.

Submitting to the dictate of international prices without strengthening local production constitutes the deadly trap in which our developing nations exhaust themselves. While global cereal stocks still offer a theoretical cushion of security, the erosion of this mattress under the combined effect of climatic hazards and geopolitical tensions directly weakens net importers. When sugar jumps by nearly twelve percent in a single month and poultry or pork rise in tandem, it is the purchasing power of urban and rural households that is struck head-on, revealing the danger of excessive dependence on foreign markets.

Believing that our African economies can durably shelter behind conjunctural subsidies or survival imports is a suicidal geopolitical illusion. The surge in global food inflation is not merely a statistical blip, but the ultimate alarm signal to accelerate import substitution. Every rise in foreign prices must sound like an imperative for productive autonomy, compelling our States to radically transform their domestic agricultural value chains so as no longer to depend on the jolts of a chaotic international trade.

Isolating our populations from external shocks demands from public authority an unshakeable strategic audacity and massive support for local producers. It is now time to elevate food sovereignty to the rank of an absolute bulwark against global instability. To weather these turbulences, Cameroon and its neighbors must turn the threat of hunger and the high cost of life into a powerful accelerator of agricultural independence, worthy and sustainable.


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EWC, DP

Tags: sécurité alimentaire inflation souveraineté alimentaire import-substitution agriculture africaine dépendance extérieure chocs extérieurs autonomie productive marché des céréales pouvoir d'achat