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Reuters
Reuters
Environment
By Seun Sanni

Sequencing West Africa's "yam belt" for food security

Yam sellers load yam tubers into a wheelbarrow at Bodija market in Ibadan, Oyo, Nigeria August 2, 2022. REUTERS/Temilade Adelaja

Stacks of hairy yams line a market in Ibadan, where traders haggle over quality and price before loading them into cars for the last mile to Nigerian consumers. Nearby, a man navigates heavy traffic with a hand cart piled high with the tubers.

Yams - pounded into paste, ground into flour, boiled or fried – provide sustenance and livelihoods across West Africa. But growing conditions across the "yam belt" from Guinea to Cameroon are deteriorating just as prices of other staples soar.

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