Somalia receives free grain shipment from Russia

Somalia has received a shipment of humanitarian aid from Russia, the East African country’s national news agency reported on Thursday.

SONNA wrote that 25,000 tonnes of grain have been handed over to the Somali Disaster Management Agency – and will now be distributed to communities that have been affected by devastating flooding in recent weeks.

President Putin in July promised to send 200,000 tonnes of free grain shipments to six African states. This is the first to arrive.

Alongside Somalia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Mali, and the Central African Republic are also expecting to receive humanitarian support from Russia in the next few weeks.

The Russian leader’s pledge came shortly after Moscow withdrew from the UN-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had been designed to facilitate Ukrainian grain exports and thereby tackle global food shortages.

Russia had left the accord because it felt that Western states were obstructing its own exports of grain and fertilizer. It had also objected that under the deal not enough grain was reaching the countries that most needed it.