As the globe convulses over the economic fallout from the war in Iran, many African nations say the ripple effects of the conflict are exacerbating longstanding challenges at home, like the lack of manufacturing on the continent and its heavy reliance on imports and foreign investment.
The standoff over the Strait of Hormuz has sent fuel prices skyrocketing. Global shipping has been pushed to a breaking point, limiting access to medicine, fertilizer and other major commodities. President Trump’s tariffs and the withdrawal of U.S. foreign assistance had already set many African economies back.
Analysts say Africa is particularly vulnerable to such external shocks because of its longstanding dependence on goods produced elsewhere. “We as a continent need to focus on internal resilience,” said Abi Mustapha-Maduakor, the chief executive of the Africa Private Capital Association.
Despite the fragile cease-fire between the United States and Iran, many Africans say they are bracing for tougher times ahead. They are making difficult calculations about how much to feed their families, whether to plant crops, how to pay for transportation and how to manage shortages.
The unwed taxi driver
Francis Kazembe, a taxi driver in the Malawian capital of Lilongwe, made the difficult decision to postpone his wedding in May, he said. The money to pay for it just isn’t there.
Mr. Kazembe, 28, said his typical daily earnings of 50,000 Malawian kwacha (about $30) have plummeted. Because of the fuel shortages, he has to spend hours, or sometimes days, waiting for fuel, so he can’t drive his taxi as much. Some days, he does not earn the 30,000 kwacha he is required to pay the taxi owner for the use of the vehicle, he said.
When he falls short of that amount, he has to give whatever he earns to the boss and goes home with nothing. And the lines at gas stations are so long, he said, that he is unable to drive his taxi on some days.
“In the past four days, I have twice slept at the filing station,” he said in an interview in April.
Malawi’s government announced in April that it had completely run out of fuel reserves and that it was negotiating with international lenders for emergency funding. There are concerns that rising fertilizer and seed costs could ruin harvests for small-time farmers and push many people in the country toward malnutrition.
“Year in and year out, there’s some problem,” said Pamela Kuwali, the Malawi country director for Care International, a development and humanitarian organization. “When global shocks hit, they don’t land on spreadsheets, they land in kitchens.”
Pounding corn with a mortar and pestle
The war is also choking a vital economic lifeline for African families: remittances from relatives working in the Persian Gulf states.
Many of the Africans working there have had their employment interrupted, analysts said. More than 200 million Africans rely on financial support from people working abroad, according to the United Nations. In 2023, Africa received $100 billion in remittances, or nearly 6 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product, according to the United Nations.
Hampered by their own budget constraints and impoverished populations, many African governments are struggling to find a way forward. The governments of the West African nations of Senegal and Gambia announced restrictions on foreign travel for government officials to save costs. The Ghanaian government announced the removal of some fuel taxes and charges to offset increasing gas prices.
Diesel shortages in Zambia in March forced hammer mills that grind corn into flour to shutdown in the Mafumba ward in the country’s southeast.
That forced women, who bear most of the labor burden in the area, to resort to the old-school, backbreaking method of manually pounding the corn with a mortar and pestle. That cut into the time the women had for their various other responsibilities like farming and child care, said Collins Mweemba, a resident of the area.
The economic challenges are also spurring political tensions that some analysts fear could lead to further instability.
Fuel supplies are so limited in Ethiopia, the second-most populous country on the continent, that the price of black-market diesel has increased by up to tenfold. That in turn has affected not just the price of goods, but also the amount of food getting to towns and cities outside the capital, Addis Ababa.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia has been increasingly outspoken in recent months about the need for his country to have its own port, leading to fears of a renewed conflict involving the neighboring coastal country of Eritrea. The fuel price shock has served to intensify Ethiopia’s demands for port access.
A mother with mouths to feed
Before the war, many African households spent more than half of their income on food and energy, and more than 80 percent in extreme cases, according to an article by Tobias Heidland and Ann-Marie Verhoeven published by Megatrends Africa, a research organization.
“These regions are disproportionately affected by the economic consequences compared to the rest of the world,” they wrote.
Zainab Usman, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy in Washington, said data suggested that Africa was not uniquely affected by the shocks of the war in Iran, but the war has added urgency to long-overdue conversations on domestic and regional energy security in Africa.
“Dependence on imports of essential commodities from regions of the world that might be unstable, that might be vulnerable to volatility is just not sustainable anymore,” she said.
Nurses working at public health facilities in Zimbabwe have been using the price increases linked to the war to highlight why they deserve raises they have long demanded.
Mitchel Londiwe, a nurse at Mpilo Central Hospital in the western city of Bulawayo, said she had been told that the cost of the driver who takes her two children to school will double to $160 a month when schools reopen from break in May.
Ms. Londiwe is 36 and earns $540 per month. She said she was considering sending her children to live with her mother in a rural area, where they would walk about five miles to school every day, to save on transportation costs.
The rising cost of food has also led them to change their nutrition habits, she said. They now usually eat bread for breakfast, corn meal with vegetables for dinner and no longer have meat because she cannot afford it, she said.
“Soon, we will look malnourished,” Ms. Londiwe said. “I’m afraid.”
Reporting was contributed by Jeffrey Moyo in Harare, Zimbabwe, Rabecca Lungu in Lusaka, Zambia and Saikou Jammeh and Ruth Maclean in Dakar, Senegal.
