Jacinta Mwangi is in a Nairobi supermarket, scanning the shelves before picking up two large bottles of vegetable oil of the same brand – one in each hand, as if to confirm their weight.
It's the kind of thing shoppers instinctively do, or so you would think. Not long ago, she wouldn't have thought twice before putting one of these staples in her cart and moving on.
Now, she places them back and reaches for the smaller bottle on the lower shelf.
"This is the new maths," the Kenyan mother tells TRT Afrika. "Where we used to buy a litre of oil, we now buy only half at a time. Sugar is for special occasions only. My children ask for fruit, and I have to say no. Our monthly budget is bursting at the seams, and every week, it feels like we are getting less and less for it."
The numbers game
Thousands of kilometres away in Rome, data analysts at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have put numbers to what Jacinta experiences at the checkout counter.
Data released on September 5 showed the FAO's benchmark food price index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices of globally traded food commodities, staying flat in August at 130.1 points.
But this apparent stability masks the real story. Prices are 6.9% higher than a year earlier, and the escalating cost of feeding a family refuses to ease.
The headline figures also conceal the complexities of life in the time of hyperinflation.
While cereal and dairy costs declined slightly, families watched these modest savings wiped out as vegetable oil prices hit a three-year high. Meat and sugar prices hit the roof, too.
Farmers squeezed
Joseph Olawale, who grows maize in Nigeria, reacts to reports of record global harvest forecasts with bewilderment.
"Yes, the world may need more maize, but the cost of fertiliser and fuel is eating my profit," Olawale tells TRT Afrika. "The price I get for my crop hasn't kept pace with what it costs me to grow it. My livelihood is not about global indices; it's about whether I can afford to plant next season."
This widening gap between what farmers receive for crops and what they pay to grow them affects agriculture everywhere.
FAO's Agricultural Market Information System warned in an accompanying report that nitrogen fertiliser prices are climbing sharply, making them "less affordable compared to crop prices in many regions".
Abundant inequality
The disconnect between global production and local realities is something that worries food security experts the most.
"What we are seeing is a tale of two food systems," says Dr Jacklyn Otieno, a food security analyst in Nairobi. "On one hand, FAO is forecasting a record global cereal production of nearly 2.96 billion tonnes for 2025. The supply outlook is comfortable. However, this abundance is not being felt equally."
She points out that high international prices for essentials like oil and sugar, coupled with local economic factors, are transmitted directly to local markets, hitting the most vulnerable populations the hardest.
"A family in a developing country spends a much larger portion of its income on food, so any increase is devastating," says Dr Otieno.
Her analysis highlights the troubling paradox of a world poised to produce more food than ever before, yet economic inequality and soaring prices put even staples out of reach for millions – from Nairobi to Niamey.
Like everyone around her, Jacinta is adapting and learning to live with this niggling sense of insecurity about what tomorrow might bring. She believes community spirit and creative adaptation can, perhaps, plug the holes that flawed economic policies worldwide have created.
"We have learnt to be smarter, to share more with our neighbours, and to plant what we can in sacks outside our door," she tells TRT Afrika. "We are finding new ways to nourish our families. It's not easy, but we aren't giving up."
