Nigeria's Food Crisis: How High Inflation Could Make It Worse

Nigeria's inflation rate has surged further to 20.52% in the month of August 2022, from 19.64% recorded in the previous month, and financial analysts believe that it will rise to 22.2% by the end of September. How Is this High Inflation Affecting Nigeria's Food Crisis? In this article, we will not only report the numbers announced by NBC; we also want to explore the impact of inflation on Nigeria's food security. We will discover insights into rising inflation and analyse its potential effects on food security.

The consumer price index (CPI), which measures the rate of change in prices of goods and services jumped to 20.52 per cent in August 2022, the highest it has ever gone since October 2005.  It rose from 19.64 per cent in the previous month.  This is according to The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Thursday 15th August 2022.

The report showed that Nigeria’s CPI rose by 20.52% year-on-year in August 2022. On a month-on-month basis, the index rose by 1.77% compared to the 1.82% increase recorded in the previous month. Also, the urban inflation rate stood at 20.95%, which is 3.36% higher compared to the 17.59 % recorded in August 2021. The rural inflation rate in August 2022 was 20.12% on a year-on-year basis, 3.69% higher compared to 16.43% recorded in August 2021.

Food Inflation

In food inflation, the report showed that food inflation rose to 23.12% year-on-year, demonstrating a 2.82% increase when likened to 20.30% at the same time in 2021. NBS attributed the increase to the increase in prices of bread and cereals, Food products, Potatoes, yams and other tubers, fish, meat, oil and fat.  While the average annual rate of food inflation for the twelve-month period ending August 2022 over the previous twelve-month average was 19.0 per cent, which was a 1.48 per cent decline from the average annual rate of change recorded in August 2021 which stood at 20.50 per cent.

Focal inflation

The Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce stacked up at 17.20 per cent in August 2022 on a year-on-year basis; shows an increase of 0.94% when compared to the 16.26% recorded in July 2022.  On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 1.59% in August 2022 but went down by 0.17% when compared to 1.75% recorded in July 2022.  Conspicuously, the highest increases were recorded in prices of Gas, fuel, Passenger transport by both road and air and lubricants.

States with the highest inflation rate

In August 2022, all items inflation rate on a year-on-year basis was highest in Ebonyi (25.33%), Rivers (23.70%), Bayelsa (23.01%), while Jigawa (17.30%), Borno (17.56%) and Zamfara (18.04%) recorded the slowest rise in headline Year-on-Year inflation.  Food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Kwara (30.80%), Ebonyi (28.06%) and Rivers (27.64%), while Jigawa (17.77%), Zamfara (18.79%) and Oyo (19.80%) recorded the slowest rise on year-on-year food inflation.

Survival strategy in a time of inflation coming up next…

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