YAOUNDE: “Is it not said ‘A hungry man is an angry man’?” commented Simon Nkwenti, head of a teachers’ union in Cameroon, after riots that killed dozens of people in the central African country.

It is a proverb world leaders might do well to bear in mind as their impoverished populations struggle with food costs driven ever higher by record oil prices, weather and speculators trading in local market places and on global futures exchanges.

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 of Muslims 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 worst hit by February 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 fuelled 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 last Sunday 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 tyres in anger at high prices and government efforts to clear away street traders.

Market Forces: The UN World Food Programme (WFP) says staple food prices in some parts of Africa have risen by 40 per cent 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.

Food inflation in Africa is 2.8 percentage points higher than headline inflation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said this month.

In South Africa last week, central bank Governor Tito Mboweni warned consumers to “tighten their belts” as the targeted inflation measure reached a five-year high at 9.4 per cent year-on-year in February, from 8.8 per cent in January.

Already, consumer spending has slowed sharply, and confidence levels are at multi-year lows all this on top of chronic energy shortages in Africa’s biggest economy.

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.

The rising food prices have affected both Africa’s small middle-class, like consumers in resource-rich South Africa, and poorer people like Sanou, the trader in Ouagadougou.

While famines like those witnessed in the 1980s are less common now thanks to aid and development programmes, there is the risk of a return to chronic inflation which could threaten the relative economic stability achieved by many African states.

“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 (barrow boys). Many girls who were my classmates in university have now become prostitutes just to have something to eat. Life is becoming unbearable,” he said.

Global Issues: There are several reasons for the spiralling cost of living.

Record oil prices driven by strong demand and insecurity in major production areas have pushed up fuel pump costs, making anything that has to be transported to market more expensive.

Rising consumption of livestock fodder and other foods by fast-expanding China and India, and the use of land and crops for biofuels have boosted demand. Erratic weather, perhaps due to climate change, has trimmed harvests in some growing regions.

Meanwhile, investment funds and other speculators have bet on prices to continue up in a self-fulfilling cycle.

Across the world, governments are facing the consequences.

—Reuters