High oil prices hit poorest hardest

As thousands of angry Nigerians took to the streets on Thursday to protest against 30 percent hikes in fuel price, across West Africa some of the world's poorest also were feeling the pinch, struggling to cope with the record-breaking cost of crude and its knock-on effect on basic goods. Chanting slogans and waving banners, noisy protestors poured onto the grounds of the Lagos Governor's office denouncing fuel hikes decided 26 August by President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. "We do not accept the increases and we're asking the government to revert to the old prices," said Adams Oshiomhole, president of the National Labour Congress and organiser of the demonstration. The price of a barrel of oil rocketed from around US $40 at the beginning of the year to reach a record high of over US $70 on the 30 August, making consumers the world over dig deeper and deeper into their pockets for goods and services. Though the average West African doesn't even own a bicycle, let alone a car, high fuel prices have forced up transport costs, making most goods, including food, more expensive. "Many products are imported and that means they have to be transported," grumbled an old woman on the streets of Dakar, where petrol and diesel have gone up 25 percent since last December. "When the price of fuel goes up, that has repercussions on everything, everything, everything!" Across much of the region, which is host to the world's six poorest countries, kerosene lamps are used to light homes with no electricity and meals simmer away on kerosene stoves. But in Togo, where the traditionally cheap fuel has peaked almost 10 percent in recent months, Nadou Lawson said: "I can't afford to use kerosene to do my cooking anymore." With six children to feed she scratches a living selling deep-fried fritters at the roadside in the Togolese capital Lome, using scavenged palm nut husks for fuel. The taxi motorbikes that whiz past as she hunches over the bubbling oil leave choking clouds of blue smoke in their wake. "The price of fuel is killing us!" said young motorbike taxi driver Ekue, draped on the iron railings of a Lome petrol station, waiting impatiently for his next passenger. Despite working all day every day and often at night, his bid to provide for his wife and two kids has become a struggle since oil soared because there are so many motorbike taxis that customers are able to bargain down fares and whittle away his dwindling earnings. "We're obliged to take clients at less than the normal tariff because nobody's got enough money to pay the normal fare," said Ekue.

Traditional fishing boats on the beach at Dakar, Senegal

In Senegal too, cash-strapped customers are forcing taxi drivers and fishermen alike to absorb the burden of the fuel price rises whenever they can. "We can't increase the price of fish because of competition from elsewhere in Senegal or cheap imported fish," said Ousmane Ndiaye, a young fisherman who goes out every day in a brightly coloured traditional fishing boat off the Dakar coastline. "But if things go on like this, we'll have to speak to the fish sellers on the market and get them to increase their prices." Yet under pressure from donors demanding market liberalisation, governments across West Africa for the last decade have been calling a halt to fuel subsidies, which cost the Nigerian government alone US $2 billion a year. Despite its rich oil resources, Nigeria does not have the refining capacity to meet domestic demand and most re-import consumable refined oil at a premium. But many Nigerians nonetheless believe access to cheap fuel is a god-given right, and national strikes to protest previous fuel price rises have won wide backing, last year even forcing the government to back-down.

A street-side fuel seller in Zwedru, Liberia

In Liberia, which relies on private petrol generators after the power system was taken out by war, the government last week warned that fuel price rises were inevitable if the global trading price of crude remains high. "The government may increase [the price of petrol] if things stay the way they are," warned Liberia's Minister for Commerce, Samuel Wlue. "Liberia is part of the global village and anything that affects other nations is bound to affect Liberia," he said. With the economy in tatters after 14 years of conflict, the Liberian government levies US $0.40 tax on every imported gallon of petrol, according to Steve Flahnpaye of the Liberian Petroleum Retailers Association. "The government needs to remove this import tax on petroleum so that we the retailers can sell the product at an affordable price," he told IRIN. But Edwin Snowe, managing director of Liberia's Petroleum Refinery Company, said that the levy was needed to pay civil servants salaries and other government expenditure.