The Russia-Ukraine war and food security in developing countries. A case study of Ghana.

Abstract

Geopolitical events often tend to have far-reaching consequences across the world. Occurrences like famine, wars, pandemics, natural disasters, and economic recessions influence the world greatly. The impact of these events mostly affects regions outside the boundaries of the place of occurrence. The Russia-Ukraine war as a geopolitical event has stirred up a lot of issues among economies of the world. This study explores the influence of the Russia-Ukraine war on food security in developing countries with a focus on Ghana. Semi-structured interviews were administered to the sampled population. The findings indicated that the Russia-Ukraine war has indeed affected food security in Ghana. The findings also showed that there were commodity trade disruptions, particularly with wheat and other grains, fertilizer chain disruptions, food price inflation, etc. Findings also revealed some measures that were implemented to mitigate the challenges posed by the Russia-Ukraine war on food security in Ghana. The measures included; the provision of storage facilities to deal with post-harvest losses, promoting the use of organic fertilizers, and some central bank policy rate adjustments to deal with the cedi’s depreciation on the international market. It is recommended that stakeholders diversify sources of funding for farming programmes, and collaborate with the private sector to build more organic fertilizer plants. University of Education,Winneba http://ir.uew.edu.gh