First Ukrainian grain ship destined for desperate Horn of Africa reaches Djibouti

The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine to people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at the port of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, an area badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.

Food security experts call the delivery a drop in the bucket compared with the vast need in the worst-hit East African countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. But the flow of grain from Ukraine to other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship departing Tuesday for Yemen. The United Nations World Food Program has said it is working on multiple ships.

The WFP says this first shipment of grain to East Africa will be shipped overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people have been affected by the country’s conflict in the Tigray region, which has flared up again.

How any of the grain will reach Tigray is in question as humanitarian deliveries by road and air have been suspended amid the fighting that flared last week between Tigray forces and Ethiopian ones. But the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions of Ethiopia also are expected to benefit.

The WFP has said that the 23,400 tons of grain on the first ship are enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month. But the U.N. has said that 2.4 million people in Tigray alone are severely food-insecure and that 20 million people across Ethiopia face hunger.

Millions of others in the Horn of Africa region are going hungry because of drought, and thousands have died. Somalia has been especially hard hit because it sourced at least 90% of its grain from Ukraine and Russia before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

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Millions of tons of food are needed for the Horn of Africa, the WFP said.

“In Ethiopia alone, three-quarters of everything that we used to distribute originated from Ukraine and Russia,” regional director Michael Dunford said.

Food-security experts have said it would take weeks for people in African countries to see grain from Ukraine arrive and even longer to see it bring down high food prices that have been a source of despair and protests in multiple nations.

Far more ships carrying grain from Ukraine’s reopened ports have been going to richer places like Europe as existing business contracts are fulfilled. As of Sunday, 114 ships carrying more than 1.3 million tons of food commodities had left Ukraine, the WFP said, but “export volumes remain far below pre-conflict averages.”