ABUJA. — Nigeria’s Senate has passed a bill seeking to make it a crime to export large quantities of unprocessed corn in an effort to alleviate hunger in the West African nation, documents seen by Reuters on Friday showed.
Africa’s most populous country is grappling with its worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
Economic hardship has worsened since President Bola Tinubu started austerity reforms, including devaluing the country’s naira currency and ending a decades-old petrol subsidy, fuelling inflation.
The weak Nigerian currency has spurred informal exports of corn, rice and sorghum to neighbouring countries due to the exchange rate differential with the West African CFA franc. — Reuters.