Shopkeeper Toyin Jacob never thought she would have to rely on handouts. Before last year, food and cash distributions were for her neighbors in Makoko, a coastal community in Nigeria’s economic hub, Lagos.
Thousands of families live in the floating slum, often in tightly packed huts with no running water or electricity.
Until recently, 60-year-old Jacob was better off, living in a concrete house connected to the grid, on a busy asphalted road. Her daughter went to university and her son had a job.
Photo: AFP
However, everything fell apart last year after her husband died, the “arrival of the coronavirus” pandemic and the economic crisis that followed.
Jacob’s small business had been just enough to get by, but could not withstand the five-week lockdown imposed at the end of March.
“With COVID-19 I couldn’t continue the business,” she said.
“There is no money to buy new provisions,” added Jacob, who has started selling household items to survive.
In a matter of weeks she became like many of her neighbors in Makoko, a person categorized by aid agencies as “extremely poor,” who depends largely on assistance.
“After the lockdown, until now, I’m not doing anything,” Jacob said.
Before the pandemic, nearly half of Nigeria’s 200 million people were living on less than US$1.90 a day, rivaling India for the world’s highest number of poor people.
Seven million more people are estimated to become poor in the West African nation this year, the World Bank said, adding that they would be “more urban” and “more educated.”
Extreme poverty is rampant in the country’s rural areas, but the lockdown has also affected city dwellers, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said.
In the second-largest city, Kano, the number of hungry people tripled in just six months, reaching 1.5 million.
The economic situation became so dire it prompted the WFP, which usually concentrates relief efforts in the country’s conflict-hit northeast, to start delivering aid along with the government to the largest hubs of Lagos and Kano, as well as the capital, Abuja.
Jacob was among 68,000 people who have received 37,000 nairas (US$96.5) in Lagos since October last year, the equivalent of two months’ worth of food.
“We want to make sure the most vulnerable people have something to cushion the blow of COVID-19, and support them, so they’ll be able to get out and look for money, knowing they have food at home,” WFP spokeswoman Chi Lael said.
In the narrow waterways near Jacob’s home, residents were barely surviving before the pandemic struck.
However, when COVID-19, which has killed 1,319 people out of 92,705 infected in Nigeria, led to markets being shut, many were left hungry.
On a baking hot afternoon, Bidemi Aye sat in front of her house, a doorless bamboo construction elevated on stilts, with her three-year-old in her lap.
It was 1pm and neither had eaten anything yet.
With the little her husband, a fish seller, brings home, the family can normally only afford to eat one meal a day.
“With the coronavirus, it’s worse,” Aye said. “We only survive by the grace of god.”
The food distribution represents just a drop in the ocean, especially in Lagos, a megacity of 20 million people where most depend on a daily wage.
In 2016, the oil-dependent country had been starting to recover from the price of crude collapsing.
However, the pandemic and a second fall in oil prices saw Nigeria enter its second recession in four years.
Inflation is now threatening to tip people even further into poverty.
The price of millet — a staple food — has doubled over the past year, the WFP has said.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Taiwan is open to joining a global liquefied natural gas (LNG) program if one is created, but on the condition that countries provide delivery even in a scenario where there is a conflict with China, an energy department official said yesterday. While Taiwan’s priority is to have enough LNG at home, the nation is open to exploring potential strategic reserves in other countries such as Japan or South Korea, Energy Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇憲) said. While the LNG market does not have a global reserve for emergencies like that of oil, the concept has been raised a few times —
AI-FUELED DEMAND: The company has been benefiting from the skyrocketing prices for DRAM chips amid the AI frenzy, especially its core product — DDR4 DRAM chips DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported that its revenue for the first quarter surged 582.91 percent to NT$49.09 billion (US$1.54 billion) from NT$7.19 billion a year earlier, as the supply crunch caused chip price spikes. Last quarter’s figure is the highest on record. On a quarterly basis, revenue jumped 63.14 percent from NT$30.09 billion, the company said. In January, Nanya Technology expected global DRAM supply scarcity to continue through the first half of 2028, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) forecast prices of standard DRAM chips would rise between 58 percent and 63
RSS