Food, Fuel, and Fertilizer: How President Trump’s War in Iran Wreaks Havoc on the African Continent

Summary

President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran rapidly escalated into a conflict with wide-ranging global consequences. The war has created a global energy crisis centered on Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—a choke point in one of the world’s most vital commercial routes, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas and nearly one-third of the global fertilizer supply transits. These consequences are being felt acutely across the African continent, where disruptions in shipping and trade have led to fuel and fertilizer shortages that are deepening food insecurity and creating impending economic crises. These developments come as many African nations are already struggling under heavy debt burdens and as drastic, abrupt cuts to U.S. humanitarian assistance have undermined their ability to respond to crisis. In the long run, this war of choice will further weaken U.S.-Africa political, economic, and security ties. Maritime disruption: Pivoting around the Cape of Good Hope creates new vulnerabilities and costs Throughout the war, Iran has demonstrated near total control over the Strait of Hormuz, blocking traffic that has triggered global trade disruptions. Recent shipping data from Kpler confirm a near-total paralysis of global energy routes, with traffic through the Strait of Hormuz falling by 90 percent to 95 percent since the war began and daily crossings plunging from roughly 125–140 ships to only a “trickle.” This disruption has cascaded into the Red Sea, triggering a secondary flashpoint at the Bab El Mandeb Strait. A narrow, 29-kilometer artery linking Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal, the Bab El Mandeb facilitates the global flow of roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas. Because roughly one-fifth of all Red Sea maritime traffic either originates from or is destined for the Persian Gulf, the closure of Hormuz acts as a functional throttle on this entire corridor. As a result, shipping vessels cannot exit the Persian Gulf to reach the Red Sea, and ships already within the corridor remain stranded if their destination lies within the Gulf or beyond. Many major carriers had been avoiding the Suez Canal and the Bab El Mandeb Strait since the Houthis attacked commercial ships and international vessels transiting the Red Sea in 2023, and the current war has made too risky for many vessels to use the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, the global shipping industry has been forced into a massive geographic pivot around the Cape of Good Hope, and Africa is feeling that shift—both positively and negatively—in real time. On one hand, African ports are seeing a surge in demand, with this rerouting transforming the African coastline into a critical refueling hub. Ship refueling companies and the bunkering sector—the maritime industry responsible for supplying fuel to ships—are seeing a surge in business as carriers avoid the Red Sea. These detours extend voyage times and have also incentivized vessels to refuel at emerging African supply points, accelerating investment by fuel suppliers and trading houses. Bunkering operations in Mauritius saw a remarkable 42 percent increase in vessel calls last month, with fuel volumes climbing significantly according to the Mauritius Ports Authority. Namibia’s Walvis Bay and Lüderitz are also emerging as key bunkering hubs along Africa’s coastline amid shifting trade patterns, positioning the country as a growing player in regional maritime logistics. Fuel suppliers, including Monjasa, Vitol, Peninsula, and Flex Commodities, are expanding operations to meet the rising demand. On the other hand, these gains are precarious. The same disruption that created the demand for African bunkering services is now constraining the Middle Eastern fuel exports needed to supply these very stations. Because African hubs rely heavily on refined petroleum from the Gulf, mainly from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, they are vulnerable to the same maritime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that diverted the traffic to them in the first place. These bunkering stations also face obstacles from piracy and limited infrastructure to uncertainty over fuel supply. Regional infrastructure is also struggling to keep pace with the sudden influx of diverted traffic. From persistent infrastructure bottlenecks and congestion at the Port of Tema in Ghana to the high cost of products driven by aggressive tax regimes in South Africa’s Algoa Bay, the “Cape route” remains a fragile long-term alternative. Beyond the bunkering sector, the broader economic toll on the continent is severe. For landlocked African nations, the pain is immediate and regressive. Unlike coastal nations that can receive fuel shipments directly by sea, landlocked countries depend entirely on overland trucking, which is now longer, slower, and more expensive as ships are forced to reroute thousands of miles around the Cape of Good Hope. The clean energy transition that could have reduced these nations’ dependency on structural fuel imports remains underfunded and incomplete despite the continent’s massive potential for clean energy deployment. Fuel prices across the continent have risen sharply: Landlocked countries such as Ethiopia have seen a 50 percent surge in prices since the start of the war while coastal countries such as Tanzania face 30 percent hikes and Kenya grapples with a 20 percent supply shortage at the pump. These impacts vary starkly by country and sector. Transportation bears the heaviest burden continent-wide given Africa’s reliance on road freight. In countries with lower grid connectivity and higher reliance on fuel-based generation in much of the Sahel region—a semi-arid area that stretches between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea—electricity costs are also surging, affecting both households and industries alike. These costs are hitting households hard. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has already urged citizens to ration fuel and has deployed subsidies for gasoline and diesel as global fossil fuel prices remain volatile. And Ethiopia is not alone. Across the continent, governments are scrambling to cushion the blow: South Africa has extended emergency fuel subsidies and tax cuts, and Zambia has suspended $200 million in fuel taxes. The crisis has also reignited interest in homegrown solutions: Nigeria’s Dangote refinery, now operating at full capacity, has increased exports of gasoline and urea to African countries including Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Tanzania, Ghana, and Togo to ease the disruptions caused by the war. Dangote’s rapid pivot to meet this emergency provides a useful blueprint for the domestic refining capacity and energy independence Africa has long needed. This conflict has made it clear that the continent’s resilience depends on accelerating local manufacturing and fostering the kind of coordinated continental response that began to coalesce during the COVID-19 pandemic. The macroeconomic picture is stark. Despite Africa entering 2026 with its fastest economic growth rate in a decade, that momentum has been swiftly upended by the war with Iran. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) trimmed its 2026 growth outlook for the continent to 4.3 percent, 0.3 percentage points below pre-war forecasts, warning that a prolonged conflict could produce output contractions twice as large as the “lag effect” of higher energy, fertilizer, and shipping costs ripples through already fragile economies. The energy crisis is forcing governments into an impossible fiscal position as they struggle to truck in essential supplies while managing preexisting debt: Already before the conflict, 22 countries across the continent faced debt distress and 28 countries spent more on debt servicing than on health care. These dynamics left African finance ministers gathering in Washington for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings scrambling to secure emergency financing as conditions tightened. World Bank President Ajay Banga has since signaled that the bank could mobilize between $20 billion and $50 billion in rapid financing to aid affected countries, though formal commitments have yet to materialize. A “food security timebomb”: Fertilizer shortages and the coming harvest crisis The Strait of Hormuz is not just an energy choke point, it is the primary transit point for the fertilizer that helps Africa’s agricultural sector feed the continent. As the primary transit point for fertilizer needed by 80 percent of African farmers, the strait’s closure has halted 30 percent of global nitrogen fertilizer exports and 45 percent of important fertilizer components such as sulfur—the chemical foundations to make almost all of the world’s phosphate fertilizer. As an example, The OCP Group in Morocco, which supplies more than 70 percent of the continent’s phosphate fertilizer, has seen production grind to a halt. The timing could not be worse. This shock is landing precisely at the beginning of planting season—a moment when farmers across sub-Saharan Africa are making input decisions that will determine harvests for the next year. In Kenya and Ethiopia, fertilizer prices have nearly doubled from roughly $480 to more than $720 per tonne in less than a month. Farmers in Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania, and Mozambique, who already had some of the lowest levels of fertilizer use in the world, are now priced out of the fertilizer market entirely because of these price hikes. As one Sudanese farmer put it, “We are already struggling to afford fertilizer. If prices go higher or supplies stop, we won’t be able to produce enough food.” For a country enduring one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with more than 19 million people facing acute hunger, a failed planting season would be catastrophic. This blockade is the third major agricultural shock to hit Africa in six years, following the disruptions of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. And it arrives on top of a set of compounding vulnerabilities that make the continent uniquely exposed to this crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa imports roughly 90 percent of its fertilizer and remains heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels, leaving most economies with almost no buffer against commodity price spikes. Climate stress has deepened that exposure: Recurring droughts across the Sahel, failed rainy seasons in the Horn of Africa, and extreme flooding in southern Africa had already pushed tens of millions into food insecurity before a single ship was rerouted. An estimated 318 million people in Africa—more than 20 percent of the continent’s population—entered 2026 experiencing hunger. Famine conditions are concentrated in crisis hotspots including Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia—countries that are simultaneously cut off from fertilizer inputs and humanitarian aid routes. Meteorologists warn that an emerging El Niño event later this year could further devastate harvests across key agricultural regions, threatening to transform a crisis into a catastrophe. The harvest consequences are now becoming visible. Because nearly half of global food production depends on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, sustained disruption threatens supply on a massive scale, with some calling this situation a “food security timebomb.” Yield reductions of only 20 to 30 percent are plausible in parts of the Sahel if input shortages persist—a disaster for countries such as Mali, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso that are already buckling from conflict and inflation. The conflict is effectively impeding productivity in Africa’s most critical agricultural regions at the start of their planting season. It may take months for food prices to reflect the fertilizer’s shortages, and experts warn that an additional 45 million people across the globe could be pushed into acute hunger by the end of the year. According to one media report, “Nigeria alone is projected to see one of the largest increases in food insecurity with 4.1 million more people expected to face acute hunger.” Meteorologists warn that an emerging El Niño event later this year could further devastate harvests across key agricultural regions, threatening to transform a crisis into a catastrophe. Gutted before the crisis hit: Aid cuts undermine the United States’ ability to respond The Trump administration’s ongoing war has hindered the global humanitarian response, reducing markedly humanitarian and development financing for food sectors in crisis. Global humanitarian food-sector funding dropped by approximately 39 percent last year from 2024 levels, while development assistance contracted by at least 15 percent. Official development assistance fell by 23 percent between 2024 and 2025, with the United States responsible for three-quarters of that decline. These steep cuts—driven largely by the Trump administration’s move to slash foreign assistance—have effectively dismantled the humanitarian safety net precisely when it is needed most and are projected to go deeper. By targeting the World Food Program’s (WFP) emergency programs and the Food for Peace program—the cornerstone of U.S. efforts to combat global hunger—the administration has stripped away the resources needed to address the very crises it is now exacerbating. This retreat has left WFP with a massive structural deficit precisely as humanitarian crises across the continent reach a breaking point. Beyond the lack of funding, disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz have created a secondary logistical crisis. Currently, more than 70,000 tonnes of WFP food aid are stuck at sea or in ports because the ships cannot safely transit the strait. Furthermore, the closure has led to ships rerouting essential World Health Organization and UNICEF medical supplies via the Cape of Good Hope, doubling transport costs, and actively shrinking the reach of WFP assistance; every extra dollar spent on fuel is a dollar stripped from lifesaving assistance. Unlike the 2022 crisis—where intense global pressure and leaders from the United Nations secured the Black Sea Grain Initiative—today’s conflict is met with a distinct lack of urgency. Although the U.N. has established a task force to address maritime trade disruption, the needs are acute and the process has yet to gain meaningful traction. The vacuum of international leadership means that the consequences of the Trump administration’s policies in Washington are being felt by the most vulnerable populations on the African continent. Conclusion President Trump’s war of choice against Iran has deepened instability and intensified crisis on a continent that was already on the edge. The full cost of this war will not be measured only by the destruction wrought in the Middle East or the disruption of global trade—although both are significant and growing—but by the knock-on effects of the Trump administration’s actions, which are playing out across Africa and elsewhere. President Trump’s war of choice has raised fuel costs at home and abroad, paralyzed local economies, created fertilizer shortages that threaten to collapse next year’s harvest, and undermined the global humanitarian system at a moment of peak need. Africa did not choose this war, but it is paying for it. The administration cannot credibly claim to support African stability and prosperity while simultaneously launching a war that is systematically destabilizing the continent.