Global food prices have risen to record levels in January, reaching their highest levels since records began in 1990.

This is according to the closely watched Food and Agricultural Organisation - The FAO's Food Price Index.

Up for the seventh month in a row, the FAO believes that these high prices are likely to persist and will not be helped by recent anti-government protests in both Algeria and Tunisia, political unrest that has now spread to Egypt.

On the line to Rome, BBC Focus on Africa's Peter Ndoro asked Abdol Reza Abbassian, a senior economist with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, why we are seeing food prices increase in this way.