Severe drought and Russia’s war in Ukraine intensify hunger and poverty in Chad

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• Judy Woodruff:

  And from Europe to Africa, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is having dire consequences around the globe. That includes in Chad, where the war, thousands of miles away, combined with severe drought, is causing food prices to soar.

  Chadians already suffer one of the world's highest levels of hunger, with more than two million people estimated to be hungry.

  Special correspondent Willem Marx recently went to Chad, where he found entire famished communities struggling to survive.

• Willem Marx:

  Happy eyes, but hungry mouths. Several dozen children live in this family compound, but, recently, there's food for just one daily meal, a morning morsel of fried bread dipped in sweet green tea, eaten at speed.

  Youssouf Ibrahim Abderaman is father to nine here and grandfather to several more. God will decide his family's fate, he insists, but Youssouf does what he can to stave off their hunger.

• Youssouf Ibrahim Abderaman, Father (through translator):

  If you earn a living day by day, you eat whatever you get. Sometimes, you don't get anything to eat for a day. Sometimes, you are able to buy food for the whole day, sometimes for half-a-day. That is how it goes.

• Willem Marx:

  What, we ask, for the consequences for his young children?

• Youssouf Ibrahim Abderaman (through translator):

  When it comes to the kids, you have to make do. What little food you have, you put it aside for them and you forget about yourself. When there is enough food, you eat together. Otherwise, you just give it to them.

• Willem Marx:

  In recent months, food prices have risen sharply in this town of 50,000 called Moussoro and right across the African nation of Chad.

  Russia's invasion of Ukraine resonating painfully even here among those already accustomed to acute shortage.

  Alhadj Adoum Berkedai, President, Moussoro Chamber of Commerce (through translator): Everything is more expensive, pasta, flour, rice, millet. Everything is more expensive.

• Willem Marx:

  Alhadj Adoum Berkedai is president of the town's Chamber of Commerce and has worked as a trader for the past 40 years. We ask him the reasons for these recent price spikes.

• Alhadj Adoum Berkedai (through translator):

  In the past, prices increase after the rainy season. But, these past few months, the Ukraine-Russia conflict made everything expensive.

• Willem Marx:

  So, what he's saying is that this entire room would normally be filled with either flour or sugar. And because of the Ukraine war, it's now completely empty.

• Alhadj Adoum Berkedai (through translator):

  We're been facing great difficulties, particularly relating to food. Despite the price increase, we have managed to import some, but what's the point if people are not able to buy it? We will end up with stocks of unsold product and go out of business.

• Willem Marx:

  Economic activity in remote communities like this largely centers on food, and in this landlocked country, a lot is imported.

  But the 15-day truck journey south across the Sahara from Libya relies on affordable fuel, also now in short supply. The local mayor invites us to tour the town's main market, where some food still sits in the stores, but shoppers are scarce.

  At Moussoro's only bakery, bread still leaves the oven as reliably as the sun rises. But there are fewer buyers for these baguettes than before and business is suffering badly.

  Mahamat Tahir and his friend Saleh start early each day, together with their team, stacking loaves deep onto trucks, piling bread high onto bikes. The bare flour costs have nearly doubled this year, forcing their prices higher too.

• Mahamat Tahir, Bakery Manager (through translator):

  Now we have fewer customers. We sell less than usual. Sales have dropped hugely. We sell far less bread.

• Willem Marx:

  The two men work morning to midnight, but Mahamat says it's still not enough.

• Mahamat Tahir (through translator):

  It's not profitable for the bakery now. We're continuing to function just to avoid closing down. The company is not making any profit.

• Willem Marx:

  Across town, at a less commercial collective established with overseas help, local women grind nuts, corn and salt into an enriched flour that helps prevent malnutrition.

• Mariam Mahamadi Moussey, Flour Cooperative Worker (through translator):

  Malnutrition isn't just affecting newborn babies. Women, children, they're all malnourished. And it's for that reason that we're making flour.

• Willem Marx:

  One worker, Mariam Moussey, tells us hunger kills kids in Chad, particularly in rural villages.

  At a distribution center in one such community, Chabaka, there's no price put on life, just a limit faced on food, less than 90 pounds of grain per month for each of these 500 families from six surrounding settlements. They sit and wait for their rations among crops that cannot grow fast enough to meet their current desperate needs.

  Mothers tested for fever that could indicate COVID-19, their babies then measured for signs of malnutrition. In Chad, the U.N. says 1.3 million children lack sufficient food, while two in every five suffer from stunted growth. Price increases helping to push those numbers even higher.

• Enrico Pausilli, World Food Program:

  This first quarter, compared to the first quarter of 2021, if you look at millet, in some areas, the price has increased by 15 percent. If you look at sorghum, you're looking at an increase of over 40 percent.

  But when you look at beans in some part of the country, we have an increase of almost up to 96 percent, almost double.

• Willem Marx:

  Enrico Pausilli is the deputy country manager for the U.N.'s World Food Program here and says it doesn't take much to devastate the population of a country like Chad.

• Enrico Pausilli:

  A little shock actually can cause incredible distress to the populations, be economical or in terms of food security and malnutrition.

• Willem Marx:

  Back in Chabaka, the World Food Program's local partner is led by Sadick Mahamat Rozi, charming, cajoling and checking that several hundred families received the supplies they have been promised.

• Sadick Mahamat Rozi, World Food Program Distribution Partner (through translator):

  It's been worsening since 2010. But now, with the situation in Ukraine, it's getting even worse. Each harvest, the crisis is increasing. The number of malnourished children is increasing.

• Willem Marx:

  The worst drought in a decade meant last year's harvest failed for many, meaning, months later, households have very little left for this fallow period known as the lean season, their annual struggle to survive made even worse by a distant war.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Willem Marx in Chabaka, Chad.

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