As the newly brokered deal takes effect, one of the United Nations-chartered ship which has been loaded with up to 23,000 tonnes of some of the Ukrainian wheat which has been destined for millions of hungry people in Ethiopia has finally docked in neighbouring Djibouti on Tuesday.
The bulk carrier ship which has been identified as the MV Brave Commander had also arrived in the Horn of Africa port city two weeks after leaving a Black Sea port in Ukraine, the UN’s World Food Programme said.
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“The food on the Brave Commander will feed 1.5 million people for one month in Ethiopia,” WFP’s regional director for East Africa, Mike Dunford, said in video footage provided by the agency from the port.
“So this makes a very big impact for those people who currently have nothing. And now WFP will be able to provide them with their basic needs.”
Ethiopia, along with Kenya and Somalia, has been in the grip of a devastating drought which has also left 22 million people at risk of starvation across the Horn of Africa, the WFP said earlier this month.
The WFP had also announced that the wheat from the Brave Commander was being transported to its operations in Ethiopia although it has not immediately cleared whether the delivery would be affected by a resumption of fighting between government forces and Tigrayan rebels in the north of the country.
Ukraine which is one of the world’s largest grain exporters had been forced to halt almost all deliveries after Russia’s invasion in February which had also raised some of the fears of a global food crisis.
But exports of grain, food and fertilisers from three Black Sea ports had also resumed at the start of this month under a deal between Kyiv and Moscow, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July.
The agreement lifted a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports and set terms for millions of tonnes of wheat and other grain to start flowing from silos and ports.
