A woman rests while selling mangoes at a shelter for displaced people at the Rex Theatre in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 13, 2026. (Photo by Clarens SIFFROY / AFP)
The conflict in the Middle East could push millions more towards hunger as its economic fallout reverberates further around the globe, the World Bank's chief economist warned in an AFP interview on April 15.
"You have about 300 million people who suffer from acute food insecurity already," Indermit Gill said. "That'll go up by about 20 percent very, very quickly," as knock-on effects grow.
Gill spoke on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington.
The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil supply route, has sent fertilizer prices soaring since they rely on oil-based inputs.
Higher prices for fertilizers may entice countries to halt food exports and hoard more food for themselves, further driving up food prices.
"Those export bans scare us massively," Gill told AFP.
If the situation isn't resolved soon, "hunger will start to stalk these countries massively."
Currently, the shortage of petrochemicals and their economic effects are being most felt in Asia, Gill explained, but "as the crisis gets longer, it's very rapidly going to spread first to Africa."
"The food that's in the market right now has already been grown," Gill said, but the real effects could be felt in a few months.
"If you get inflation in, especially in the kind of things that the poor consume relatively more often, that inflation is going to hurt massively," Gill went on.
Gill also warned that inflation - not just in food prices - could rise from about 3 percent globally to as much as 4.7 percent this year, in the most extreme scenario where the conflict stretches to August.
