Somehow, the easing of the lockdown has brought about the scarcity and increase in the prices of food items in the market. Food crops and other food items were expensive during the lockdown, but everyone attributed that to the cost of bringing in goods and agricultural produce from farms and states, where they were produced. Before the reopening of interstate borders, security agents and “youths” of different communities made it difficult and expensive to transport food items from one state or town to another. But right now, people move freely so the price increase and scarcity can no longer be attributed to lockdown, at least, not directly.

I thought this problem was peculiar to Enugu until I spoke with people from different parts of the country and realised that the case is almost the same everywhere. One cannot help but wonder the cause of this price increase.

Some people have attributed the increase in prices of some food crops and food items to the season of the year. For instance, crops such as tomatoes and yams are out of season and are therefore scarce. Rainy season has also prevented or disturbed the availability of dry food items that need the sun for preservation. Example of food that belongs to this group is abacha. This truly shows that the high cost of some items is as a result of the season of the year. But how does that explain the high cost of other items such as vegetable oil, palm oil, fish, tomato puree (tin tomato) among others? Besides, this is the season of fresh corn, but that one is not just expensive but scarce too. This finally means that the season of the year is not the cause of price increase of food items.

Some people said the sudden increase in the price of fuel is the cause. According to people that belong to this group, increase in fuel pump price brought about the increase in transportation cost, which led to the unavoidable increase in prices of goods, including that of agricultural produce. Hence the sudden increase in the fuel pump price from N121 to N143 has caused a chain reaction that suddenly increased the price of things in the market. This theory would have been logical if the price of petrol before the lockdown was not N145.

The third theory is what gives me concern. According to some traders, there is unavailability of some food items, even in the farms. They claim that they have ordered for those items but are yet to get them. Some claim that middlemen find it more difficult to penetrate the interior parts of the country, where they buy some of these items. The reasons for this include insurgencies in the parts of the country that produce the majority of the staple foods that serve the nation. According to one of the stories surrounding this theory, insurgents have made roads unsafe and impassable. They kidnap, kill and maim many road users and even destroy or hijack their wares. This discourages people from carrying out any transactions that will take them to those volatile areas.

Another story surrounding the unavailability of food crops in the market is that farmers are afraid of going to farms because their farms have been made unsafe by insurgents, kidnappers and killers. You can imagine when bandits are attacking the North-West, Boko Haram is paralysing the North-East and Fulani Herdsmen have made North-Central unsafe, how then can Nigeria survive when these areas are the chief producers of food crops?

The way I’m seeing our food market today, I can tell you that a food crisis is looming. I don’t know what is happening but it is no longer funny. Our farmers need to be encouraged. If they missed this planting season because of the lockdown or insecurity, the government should consider lifting the ban on the importation of staple food items such as rice, tomato and maize, until things stabilise. If nothing is done, and done quickly, food scarcity will seize the country in no distant time.

Chinese Chipmaker, Cambricon Technologies, recorded a 358% surge from its IPO to stay at 295 yuan at the Star Market, on Monday.

Cambricon, backed by Alibaba Group Holding among others, is the second high-profile chip maker to list on the domestic market in less than a week. China’s biggest chip manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), listed Thursday on Star with 53 billion yuan ($7.58 billion), marking the biggest IPO in China in a decade according to SCMP.

Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited develops and distributes software products. The Company produces terminal intelligent processors, cloud intelligent chips, accelerator cards, intelligent computing cluster systems, and other products. Cambricon Technologies also produces computer peripheral products.

Cambricon’s gain on Monday puts its capitalization 85 billion yuan, while SMIC has a capitalization of 587.1 billion yuan. The duo are pushing to bring Chinese semiconductor industry to the fore in the wake of a trade war between the United States and China that has impacted the global growth of Chinese telecom companies.

Cambricon was founded in 2016 by two brothers, Chen Yunji, 37, and Chen Tianshi 35, to produce AI chips for smartphones. The company has since become a big name in the semiconductor industry, producing chips used in millions of smartphones.

Huawei and Alibaba are its major clients, spurring the company to a potential competition with SMIC.

But analysts believe the growth is expected to slow in the near future due to increasing research and production cost. Yan Fan, an analyst at China Merchant Securities, said expenditure will erode the company’s earnings in three years.

According to the brokerage, it is expected that the chipmaker will lose about 482 million this year and 380 million yuan in 2021. It posted a 1.18 billion yuan loss in 2019, according to the IPO prospectus. But that was before the recent push by the Chinese government for more semiconductor manufacturing.

The US trade relationship with China has deteriorated that companies from the South Asian country have been denied rights to purchase US made chips.

Huawei, which leads the global 5G rollout was ousted from the United States last year on national security concerns. Against the backdrop, the Chinese company had the capacity to lead other companies in the business of 5G deployment until the United States government announced in May, that semiconductors in the US, including TSMC will no longer sell chips to Huawei.

The development is leading many countries who initially had stood up to the US pressure to boycott Huawei to reconsider their stand. It is also paving the way for Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia to lead the way in 5G technology.

On Tuesday last week, the UK government announced that it is dropping Huawei from its 5G plans, citing the US ‘chips ban.’ Without access to the US semiconductor market, it will be difficult for the company to live up to its 5G obligation.

The Chinese government has been working to minimize its dependence on foreign semiconductors, and to limit the impact such bans would have on its telcos. At the wake of the ban by the United States, Huawei employees had gone to produce alternatives to the American semiconductor parts. But that has not yielded the needed result because the semiconductor manufacturing takes time, and the US is ahead in the industry.

Christopher Ford, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and non-proliferation, told reporters in May: “If one wants to be working in the area of the very best chips, the chips that have the most computing power packed into smallest space, it is necessary to use US design tools right now because we have a commanding comparative advantage in that area.”

Chinese companies could no longer use US design tools due to the trade agreement the two countries signed earlier in the year, which forbids China from stealing technology ideas from the US. Therefore, the situation has left Huawei’s survival hanging on the ability of China’s semiconductor companies to produce enough of the 5G infrastructural components.

China has a $1.4 trillion New Infrastructure initiative, designed to see a Chinese company lead globally in 5G roll out, and Huawei is at the center of it.

Recent apathy toward China sees the initiative falling apart and Huawei has been at the center of the controversy. As the US pressures its Western allies to cripple China’s 5G global leadership, as it would impact Western influence around the world, Huawei may find success in developing countries if the Chinese semiconductor industry ups its game.