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Happy Tuesday and Welcome to Export Brief. A weekly newsletter with insightful developments and trends on non-oil export trade from Africa's largest economy and from the global stage. If you enjoy EB, share it with friends. 

• ⏲ : This edition is 913 words, a 3-minute read.

IN BRIEF

Situational awareness: Nigeria's Central bank increases monetary rate from 13% to 14%.

• Address global food security crisis now - global agencies warn

• The Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) to help facilitate the exports

• Ukraine, Russia sign grain export deal

GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY

Address global food security crisis now - global agencies warn

The impending global food security crisis calls for urgent action by the international community. As such, the heads of five multilateral agencies: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director General Qu Dongyu, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank Group (WBG) President, David Malpass, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, David Beasley and World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in a joint statement, called for urgent action to address the situation.

Why it matters: The COVID-19 pandemic, interruption in international supply chains, and the war in Ukraine have severely disrupted food, fuel, and fertilizer markets, which are interlinked, the statement said.

• By June 2022 the number of acute food insecure people — whose access to food in the short term has been restricted to the point that their lives and livelihoods are at risk — increased to 345 million in 82 countries according to WFP.

• Making matters worse, around 25 countries have reacted to higher food prices by adopting export restrictions affecting over 8 percent of global food trade. In addition, complicating the food supply response is the doubling of fertilizer prices over the last twelve months.

Call to action: Avoiding further setbacks to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires short and long-term actions in four key areas:

• Providing immediate support to the vulnerable

• Facilitating trade and international supply of food

• Boosting production

• Investing in climate-resilient agriculture

In between the lines: According to the statement, previous experience demonstrates that it is important to support developing countries hurt by price increases and shortages to meet their urgent needs without derailing longer-term development goals.

• Assuring that the most vulnerable countries facing significant balance of payments problems can cover the cost of the increase in their food import bill to minimize any risk of social unrest is essential.

• Development financing should provide clients with viable alternatives to inward-looking policies such as export bans or blanket subsidies of fertilizer imports. Investments in scalable safety nets and climate resilient agriculture and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture are good win-win examples.

The bottom line: They call for countries to strengthen safety nets, facilitate trade, boost production, and invest in resilient agriculture. Country specific needs should be identified and defined through a country-based process that mobilizes investments from multilateral development banks to connect short-, medium- and long-term opportunities.

TRADE ROUNDUP

TRADE FACILITATION | The Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) to help facilitate the exports

• The next thing now is to site the factory and then make use of Nigerian produced 100 per cent – palm kernel, cashew nuts, and soya beans – to convert them from seeds to oils.

GLOBAL TRADE | Ukraine, Russia sign grain export deal

• Ukraine and Russia, have reached a compromise to sign a deal on Saturday for the safe export of Ukrainian grain in a bid to avert a looming food crisis.

AfCFTA | Take advantage of AfCFTA, NAFDAC urges pharma companies

• Nigerian pharmaceutical companies must be ready for trading their products across the continent with quality products that can be approved in different countries through continental reliance among regulators, the Director General, National Agency for Food Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

UPCOMING TRAINING

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DATA WATCH

TWEET OF THE WEEK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

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NON-OIL EXPORT meets WORLD RECORD: 1. Participants at the International Trade Seminar on Non-Oil Export organised by Zenith Bank in Lagos recently. 2. Congratulations to Nigeria's Tobi Amusan who made history at the World Athletics Championships as the new world record holder of the 100M Women's Hurdles in 12:12 (+0.9 m/s). CREDITS: Twitter/MohdBelloKoko/WorldAthletics