UN plans to buy corn for Africa from Ukraine and Mexico

The World Food Program (WFP) of the United Nations intends to purchase 290 thousand tons of corn from Mexico and Ukraine.

The grain will be sent to the country of South Africa, which suffered from the drought caused by El Niño, Bloomberg writes.

With Zimbabwe’s main maize crop down by about 70%, and maize plantings in Zambia and Malawi also down, the WFP is trying to raise about $400 million to fund its fight.

Helping South Africa is difficult because people in the region mostly eat white corn, not the yellow corn that is popular in other countries, and many countries ban the import of genetically modified grain unless it is milled. However, about 27 million people in seven countries will need assistance from the end of this year to March 2025, said Valerie Guarnieri, WFP Assistant Executive Director for Programming and Policy Development.

“We will definitely have to go outside the region to procure the white maize that we are looking for for our initiative,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg after returning from a trip to Zimbabwe.

The WFP is expected to import a significant portion of the volume (about 100 thousand tons) of white corn from Mexico, some from Tanzania, and small amounts of milled yellow corn from Ukraine.

Tags: Ukraine, corn, Africa