The Strait Nobody in Africa is Talking About — But Everyone Will Feel

Uchumi360 | Analysis Somewhere between Iran and Oman, a strip of water barely 21 miles wide at its narrowest point is quietly reshaping the cost of living for nearly 1.5 billion Africans. Most people on the continent have never heard of the Strait of Hormuz. But if you have paid for fuel, bought bread, or run a business that depends on imported inputs in recent weeks, the Strait of Hormuz has already had a conversation with your wallet, whether you knew it or not. The US-Israel conflict with Iran has effectively closed the world's most important energy chokepoint. And Africa, which had nothing to do with starting this war, may end up paying some of its highest costs. Africa had nothing to do with starting this war. It may still pay some of its highest costs. One Chokepoint. One-Fifth of Global Oil. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20 percent of the world's entire oil supply and enormous volumes of liquefied natural gas out of the Persian Gulf to global markets every single day. Today, that artery is effectively shut. Iran has declared the strait closed and has already attacked multiple vessels that attempted to pass. Global shipping giants including Maersk have halted operations through the corridor. Tanker traffic has collapsed. War-risk insurance has either vanished or become prohibitively expensive. The knock-on effect was immediate. Iraq shut down its Rumaila oil field. Saudi Arabia closed its largest domestic refinery at Ras Tanura following direct strikes. Major facilities in the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar followed. Qatar, which supplies significant volumes of natural gas to Europe, has halted those flows, adding pressure to an already strained global energy market. Global benchmark Brent crude surged from around $73 per barrel before the conflict to $81-$85 within hours. If the closure holds, analysts warn of sustained prices above $100 per barrel, a level that, based on 2022 precedent, could reverse economic growth across large parts of the continent. Africa's Contradiction: Produces Oil, Pays for Petrol Here is the structural problem Africa has never fully solved. The continent produces crude oil. Yet many of its economies still import refined petroleum products; petrol, diesel, kerosene, because it lacks the refining capacity to process what it extracts. Tanzania is a useful case study. In the early decades after independence, the country built the TIPER refinery in Dar es Salaam, a facility that once offered a foundation for national and regional energy stability. That kind of strategic thinking feels more urgent today than it did then. Yet the conversation about expanding domestic refining capacity has never matched the scale of the vulnerability it was meant to address. Nigeria's Dangote Refinery, with a nameplate capacity of around 650,000 barrels per day, represents the continent's most significant recent step toward energy self-reliance. It has already begun reducing Nigeria's dependence on imported petrol and is supplying parts of West Africa. But the road to getting there was littered with delays, structural barriers, and systemic resistance, both internal and external, that cost years. Uganda and Tanzania are jointly building the world's longest heated crude-oil pipeline to export raw crude. Meanwhile, serious conversation about local refinery capacity remains strangely quiet. Which raises a pointed question: Uganda and Tanzania are jointly building the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, the world's longest heated crude-oil pipeline, to export raw crude to the Indian Ocean coast. The same old mindset. Dig it up, ship it out, buy it back refined. Why does that conversation continue while the refinery conversation stays quiet? Tanzania is taking some steps. The government is expanding strategic petroleum storage in Dar es Salaam, including a roughly 378,000 cubic metre facility designed to hold several months of supply. That buffer matters. But storage buys time. It does not solve the structural dependency. Fertiliser: The Shock Nobody Sees Coming Beyond fuel, there is a slower-moving pressure point that will hit African households just as hard, possibly harder. The Gulf is a major hub for nitrogen-based fertiliser exports that supply African agriculture. Roughly 31 to 32 percent of global urea and 44 to 50 percent of global sulphur trade moves through the Strait of Hormuz. With Gulf-linked shipping under strain and cargo rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope adding 10 to 14 days to transit times and raising freight and insurance costs landed fertiliser prices across the Sahel, East Africa, and Southern Africa are set to rise in the coming planting cycle. For smallholder farmers already absorbing the cost of erratic rainfall and climate volatility, higher input costs mean lower yields. Lower yields mean tighter food supply. And in markets where food inflation was already a political pressure point, this dynamic could push household vulnerability to breaking point. We have seen this film before. In 2022, the Russia-Ukraine conflict triggered a fertiliser shock that fed directly into food inflation across multiple African economies. The combination of extended shipping reroutes and elevated input costs could produce a very similar second-round effect. This is the moment African nations must get serious about building local fertiliser production. Not as a long-term aspiration. As an urgent strategic priority. Who Wins and Who Loses on Exports Africa's exposure here is not only as an importer. The continent is deeply embedded in global supply chains as a raw material supplier, and the effects of an oil shock run in both directions. In the short term, oil producers; Nigeria, Angola, Algeria may see near-term fiscal gains from higher crude prices. But if sustained energy costs slow global economic growth, demand for industrial metals could soften. Zambia, heavily dependent on copper exports, faces a scenario where energy costs rise while the market for its primary export weakens. That is a painful squeeze. East Africa faces its own specific exposure. Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia have grown their livestock exports to Gulf markets significantly in recent years. Shipping disruptions or demand contraction in the region could delay or reduce those flows with direct consequences for pastoral communities and export revenues. The Macro Pressure Is Real and Accelerating Higher import bills. Rising freight and insurance costs. Volatile export earnings. These pressures are now arriving simultaneously in African national balance sheets. Emerging market currencies have already shown renewed volatility as investors reprice energy risk and the US dollar firms. Central banks across the continent now face a narrower policy path: cut rates to support growth, or hold firm to defend against inflation rekindled by import costs. If Brent crude sustains above $100 per barrel for a full quarter, economists estimate that several African fuel-importing economies could see inflation re-accelerate and rate-cut cycles pushed into 2027. Countries with stronger foreign exchange reserves, domestic refining capacity, and strategic storage buffers have more room to absorb the shock. Others are navigating this with much thinner margins. If this conflict continues for a few more weeks, it could reverse the economic growth trajectory of most African economies for the next 12 months. What This Means for Tanzania For Tanzania specifically, the implications are layered. On fuel, the country's strategic storage expansion is a genuine buffer but one that buys months, not years. The pressure on pump prices is real and will filter into transport costs, which affect the price of nearly everything. On agriculture, Tanzanian smallholders and commercial farmers face rising fertiliser costs heading into the next planting season. Food inflation, already a concern in lower-income households, could intensify. On trade, Tanzania's position as a transit hub for landlocked neighbours; Zambia, DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, means that elevated shipping costs and freight delays affect not just domestic trade but the country's regional trade revenue and port competitiveness. And on monetary policy, the Bank of Tanzania will need to weigh the inflationary pressures from imported costs against the need to maintain conditions that support growth. The Deeper Question Geopolitics is no longer something that happens elsewhere and occasionally affects Africa. It is the operating environment. The Strait of Hormuz sits thousands of miles from Dar es Salaam. But what happens there is being priced into fuel queues, fertiliser costs, currency movements, and central bank decisions across the continent right now. Africa's long-term answer to this vulnerability is structural: domestic refining capacity, local fertiliser production, deeper intra-African trade, and regional food systems that do not depend on distant chokepoints. The continent has known this for years. The question is whether this moment with costs rising in real time is finally the one that drives the urgency those reforms have always deserved. Uchumi360 covers business, investment, and economic policy across Tanzania and East Africa.