Russia-Ukraine crisis: Zimbabwean bakers’ profits are falling

• Simba Muchingami was in a really good mood four months ago.
• Customers were lining up outside his small bakery.
• However, now, Zimbabwean bakers’ profits are falling.

Simba Muchingami was in a really good mood four months ago.

Customers were lining up outside his small bakery in Kuwadzana, a densely populated neighborhood west of Harare, Zimbabwe, to purchase freshly made sugar buns, doughnuts, and other confections.

However, unlike in the past when things were already raucous at sunrise, his medium-sized electric commercial oven is frequently frigid even by mid-morning these days.

The 33-year-old said to Al Jazeera, “This place used to be busy around this time.” “We were busy starting at 5 a.m. Right now, nobody exists.

Doughnuts are on a tray that is left on the floor.

There are no customers present, despite the enormous table being perfectly organized with packed fresh sugar buns. A worker is casually perched on a chair in the corner.

In a contentious land reform program in 2000, the then-president Robert Mugabe took lands from white commercial farmers who had acquired them during colonial times and gave them to new Black proprietors.

The majority of them had little to no capital, which caused Zimbabwe’s agricultural output to decline and force the country to hunt for alternatives abroad.

Since then, the nation has relied on imported wheat to make bread, a staple food. In 2021, up to 40% of its total imports were from Russia.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, supply networks around the world were interrupted, leading to a sharp increase in commodity prices that had a devastating impact on many nations, including those in Africa.

He no longer sells even half of what he did four months ago, and five of his eight staff have been fired.

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