War in Ukraine: will Algeria run out of wheat?

I’Algeria, Africa’s second-largest consumer of wheat and fifth-largest cereal importer in the world – behind Egypt, China, Indonesia and Turkey – will it be impacted by the war in Ukraine? The question needs to be asked. Algeria’s cereal production for the 2021-2022 season, due to the lack of rain, fell by 38%, causing an increase in imports. Mainly dependent on the European wheat market, Algeria decided last year to diversify its sources of supply by changing the specifications which prevented it, for example, from importing from Russia, the world’s leading exporter.

Thus, Algeria, which has six months of reserves, imported, in December 2021, Russian wheat (800,000 tonnes) for the first time in five years and…