
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.