Fried Bean Breakfast Snack Hit by Soaring Prices in Nigeria
- Main ingredient used for making akara jumped 32% in May
- Inflation could push 15 million into extreme poverty this year
The ‘akara’ snack.
Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
A sharp rise in the prices of beans and peanut oil is making Nigeria’s favorite breakfast snack unaffordable for the country’s poor.
The cost of beans, the main ingredient in akara -- fried snacks that are sold all over Africa’s most populous nation-- jumped 32% in May compared with a year earlier, almost double the headline inflation rate of almost 18%.