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Africa’s latest burst of economic pain is rippling through households as fuel costs climb across the continent amid the Middle East war, which began Feb. 28 with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. In Lagos, Nigeria, taxi driver Adegbola Isaac said he went to the gas station twice last weekend and saw the price rise each time until it reached 1,350 naira ($0.99) per liter—nearly 35% higher since the fighting started. Isaac told The Associated Press that the increase has wiped out most of his daily profit.
Isaac’s experience reflects broader pressure on living costs in African countries already grappling with earlier shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The Associated Press reported that the Middle East conflict and the knock-on effects on shipping routes have renewed a scramble for energy and other critical inputs that many African economies depend on from global markets.
The AP report linked much of the new fuel pressure to disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, which it described as being largely closed off. For countries that import refined oil products, the result has been fast and visible at the retail level, with rising fuel prices feeding into higher costs for many goods and services.
The United Nations, the report said, is now pursuing a mechanism to allow fertilizer to resume safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz. The UN said the approach would help build confidence in wider diplomatic efforts connected to the Iran war, while also addressing concerns about access to fertilizer across Africa.
A 2025 report cited by the AP from U.N. Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, characterized Africa as “the epicenter of overlapping global crises.” That assessment, as described in the report, says more than half of the continent’s imports and exports go to and from five non-African countries—an exposure experts said leaves Africa “critically integrated” into global economies and therefore exposed to disruptions elsewhere.
The AP report gave several country examples of how the fuel shock is landing. It said Kenya relies on Middle East fuel, with fuel retailers telling AP that 20% of the country’s outlets were already affected. It also said Uganda’s fuel stock was initially projected to last only a few weeks.
Nigeria, despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, faces particular constraints because it lacks local refinery capacity, the report said. The Associated Press reported that Nigeria therefore imports refined crude products from Europe, while South Africa sources a significant amount of its fuel from Saudi Arabia.
Beyond fuel, the report said access to fertilizer—needed for agriculture and food systems—could face further disruption, including in conflict-wracked countries such as Sudan and Somalia. The AP also reported that Kenya’s flower industry has had weekly losses of up to $1.4 million since the Iran war began, with growers attributing the losses to weaker demand and shipping disruptions.
Some governments and industries are already adapting to the new cost pressures. In Zimbabwe, the AP reported that health labor workers protested for wage increases as living costs rose, and that the government planned to increase fuel blending with ethanol from 5% to 20%, while warning that the higher blend can pose a danger to cars and contribute to emissions of pollutants.
Other responses are more reactive to supply and prices. The AP reported that diesel-dependent industries in South Africa began “panic-buying” after fuel supplies from Saudi Arabia dropped, even as the country’s Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources said South Africa still has untapped strategic reserves and diversified supply routes.
Experts warned that the longer the Iran conflict lasts, the more difficult it may become to predict the extent of economic damage. Zainab Usman, a senior research scholar at the New York-based Center on Global Energy Policy, said that if the conflict persists for another month or two, “honestly, we’re going to be in unknown terrain, that no one else, like, no one can really predict, and we just have to wait and see.”
With the global squeeze in oil supply continuing, the AP said some African governments have begun looking for alternative supply routes. It reported that Bloomberg said several countries, including South Africa, Kenya and Ghana, have reached out to Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery for fuel deals.
While the AP said the Dangote refinery regularly exports jet fuel to the U.S. and Asia, it reported that the refinery this week announced it had completed the sale of 12 shipments of refined petroleum products to several African countries, including Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Tanzania, Ghana and Togo—described as a first at that scale since the refinery reached full capacity earlier this year. Energy experts told AP that meeting demand could become challenging if expansion plans are slowed or crude oil supply is disrupted.
Olufola Wusu, a Lagos-based oil and gas expert who worked on a team that helped review Nigeria’s national gas policy, said that “as long as there is a steady supply of crude oil, the (Dangote) refinery has the capacity to meet some of the needs” from across the continent.
Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Farai Mutsaka in Harare, Zimbabwe, contributed to this report.