Food riot

Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, said that computer modelling suggested an outbreak of instability, while he also blamed the use of corn for ethanol as exacerbating the problem.

However, the director of trade and markets and the Food and Agriculture Organization, David Hallam, said that there was no imminent danger of such an outcome, though a worsening change in climate and government policies, such as export bans and panicked-buying, could trigger such a scenario.

International commentators focusing on Africa have associated the riots with poverty and hunger hence the call to explore strategies to boost productivity and lower food prices.

[8] Yet on-the-ground reports highlight that the riots were driven by multiple factors coming together such as popular dissatisfaction with socioeconomic and political situation of the country and the availability of social media that helped rioters to mobilize.

[12][13][14] Protests in South Africa in July 2021 that initially began as a response to the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma quickly escalated into nationwide riots and looting of supermarkets and shopping malls.