North Africa has entered a food security crisis. Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are witnessing food inflation levels not seen since the civil unrest of the Arab Spring a decade ago. Then, soaring food costs, particularly skyrocketing bread prices, helped fuel the popular protest movements against corruption and injustice that ousted Tunisia's long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and toppled other autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In Morocco and other MENA countries, the social unrest prompted significant political and socio-economic reform. Although the Maghreb's current food crisis was precipitated by the local and global economic shocks brought on by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and its 2021 aftermath, the structural fragility of the food systems in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco is responsible for severity of the problem. At the core of this fragility is the failure to implement adequate measures to address the impact of increased water scarcity and debilitating climate change.
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