It begins before the sun rises. In Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood, in Lagos along the Apapa corridor, in Accra’s industrial quarter and in Mombasa’s port district, the queues appear in the dark — motorcycles, matatus, lorries, private cars — all waiting for fuel that may or may not arrive, and that, when it does, will cost more than it did last week.
This is not a local failure. This is the Strait of Hormuz.
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Within hours, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had issued warnings forbidding maritime passage through the narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean — the channel through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade had flowed, every day, for decades. Tankers turned back. Insurance premiums collapsed coverage. The world’s most critical energy corridor effectively went dark.
A Crisis That Came for Everyone
What followed has been called the largest disruption to global energy supply since the 1970s oil shock. Within weeks, oil prices were climbing toward $100 a barrel. By early April, after US-Iran ceasefire talks collapsed in Islamabad, President Trump announced a naval blockade of Iranian ports, and Brent crude pushed past $102. Analysts at JPMorgan and Capital Economics began raising forecasts toward $110–$130 per barrel if traffic remained disrupted.
Africa, which produces oil but refines very little of it domestically, felt the blow almost immediately. Fitch Ratings cut its 2026 growth forecast for Kenya to 5.0 percent, down from 5.2, warning that “inflation will run a bit hotter than previously expected.” The agency flagged a “sharp upward adjustment” in Kenyan fuel prices expected in mid-April as February’s cheaper-priced shipments ran out. Growth forecasts for the DRC were trimmed to 5.2 percent. Ethiopia’s, to 8.0 — a country that sources the vast majority of its refined petroleum from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, all of whom now face their own supply crises. Tanzania, whose tourism and gold export economy had shown resilience, was warned its current account deficit could widen to 3.5 percent of GDP.
Fitch put it plainly: an uptick in protests was likely if fuel prices continued rising. In a continent where the cost of living has already been a flashpoint for unrest — from Kenya’s Gen Z protests in 2025 to Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal riots — that warning lands with weight.
The Road Not There
For countries like Ethiopia and landlocked states across the Sahel, there is no workaround. Unlike the United States, which can pivot toward domestic production, or India, which secured emergency waivers to buy stranded Russian oil, most African nations lack strategic fuel reserves, alternative supply routes, or the diplomatic leverage to negotiate special access to disrupted markets.
South Africa’s diesel price, already under pressure from a weakening rand, was projected to climb an additional R2 to R4 per litre in the next adjustment cycle. Approximately 167 containers of South African stone fruit were stranded at sea, ships rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding days and costs to journeys that had previously passed through the Red Sea and Suez. Egypt, whose economy is heavily import-dependent, reinstated price caps on unsubsidized bread to prevent civil unrest — a measure that reflected the tightrope governments across the continent were now walking.
Aviation has compounded the pain. With Middle Eastern airspace restricted and major Gulf hubs disrupted, airlines rerouting around the conflict have added fuel costs on already strained routes into and out of African cities. The price of jet fuel, a kerosene derivative, more than doubled in some markets as refineries struggled with crude composition changes following the Gulf’s disruption.
No Shore in Sight
On April 13, the US Navy began enforcing the blockade. As of this writing, fewer than 10 ships per day were passing through a strait that once handled more than 100 daily. Cornell supply chain expert Vidya Mani, speaking this week, chose words that felt less like analysis and more like warning: “We just have to be prepared for constant higher prices, irrespective of how this blockade turns out. Each crisis has a lingering effect on the next one.”
For Africa’s households, the arithmetic is already brutally simple. When fuel costs more, everything costs more — transport, food, manufacturing, electricity generation. The street vendor in Kampala who fills a generator to power her cold storage unit, the maize farmer in Zambia who depends on fertilizer priced in petroleum derivatives, the student in Addis Ababa who rides a bajaj to school — they did not vote for this war, did not negotiate these terms, and hold no stake in Hormuz.
They will pay for it anyway.
