The elephants have been fighting. In boardrooms and war rooms thousands of kilometres from Lagos, decisions were made. The tremors are landing on factory floors across Africa.
The elephants have been fighting. In boardrooms and war rooms thousands of kilometres from Lagos, decisions were made. In January 2025, in what many analysts described as an attempt to reassert American economic dominance amid China’s growing manufacturing power and political influence on the world stage, Donald Trump launched a trade war. By April 2025, on what he called “Liberation Day,” Washington had imposed sweeping tariffs on 190 countries, pulling the rug from under 25 years of African trade preferences. Beijing responded by opening its doors, extending zero-tariff access to nearly every African nation.
In February 2026, seeing an opportunity to strike a long-time adversary, the US and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran. Within 48 hours the Strait of Hormuz, passageway for a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil, went dark. Houthi forces, Iran’s allies, resumed attacks in the Red Sea the same day.
The tremors from these clashes arrived here in Nigeria as numbers on invoices and delays at the port. Diesel jumped 65 percent. Container haulage from Apapa to Ikeja rose from N450,000 to as high as N700,000. At Duchess Group, a food manufacturer producing sweet potato flour, CEO Victoria Akai watched costs spike overnight. “The escalating cost of fuel has dramatically affected production costs for local businesses,” she told Nairametrics. The earthquakes happened far away. The damage is landing on factory floors and loading docks across Africa.
These disruptions did not arrive simultaneously. They compounded, each one landing on top of the last.
Akai’s experience at DuchessGroup is far from unique. Across the continent, the impact varies by scale butthe pressure is universal.
For small importers, freight surcharges hit directly. CMA CGM imposed a $600 per TEU surcharge onChina-to-Nigeria cargo. A young fashion designer importing fabrics must choose:absorb costs and operate at a loss, raise prices and lose customers, or pause orders and slow growth.
Mid-sized manufacturers importing raw materials face margin compression from both directions. Larger manufacturers with just-in-time systems now hold excess inventory, tying up working capital. In the pharmaceutical sector, where active ingredients are acutely sensitive to oil price shocks, the MAN Pharmaceutical Group warned that disruptions in the global petroleum market immediately inflate the cost of chemical base materials, squeezing margins across the sector.
Yet Nigeria’s intra-African trade reached N4.82 trillion($3.1 billion) in the first half of 2025, evidence that some businesses are pivoting to regional sourcing. The naira figure looks impressive, up 248percent from N1.38 trillion in the first half of 2019, but the dollar value tells a more sobering story: $3.1 billion is actually 30 percent below the $4.51 billion recorded in the same period before COVID, a reminder that the naira’s 80 percent depreciation over six years has inflated the appearance of growth. Still, the direction of travel is real. This requires rebuilding supplier relationships and sometimes accepting less competitive pricing for faster, more reliable delivery, but businesses are making that choice.
The disruptions are painful. But they are also accelerating a structural shift that has been building for years:the move toward regional trade, local sourcing, and reduced dependence on distant supply chains.
China extended zero-tariff access to all African countries except Eswatini (effective May 2026), creating an alternative to US market uncertainty and deepening economic ties. Nigeria’s non-oil exports grew 21 percent to $12.8billion in the first half of 2025, partly driven by this diversification.
The AfCFTA, with 48 ratifications, is creating the framework for intra-African trade, though customs cooperation and rules-of-origin administration remain works in progress. Nigeria’s new Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme, launched in 2025, accelerated cargo clearance for pilot participants by 30 to50 percent. The Lekki Deep Sea Port now handles 40.6 percent of national cargo throughput, overtaking Apapa as Nigeria’s busiest port, but infrastructure upgrades across the system take time.
The opportunity is real, but it requires deliberate action from businesses, not just policy frameworks.
The Suez Canal remains 60 percent below pre-crisis traffic levels despite months without Houthi attacks prior to the Iran war, and resumed hostilities have pushed the timeline further out. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, with a dual US-Iran blockade in place and just 5 percent of normal traffic passing through. As of May 1, the US faces a War Powers Resolution deadline requiringCongressional authorization for continued military action, and negotiations remain stalled.The optimistic case: a diplomatic breakthrough leads to a peace agreement, carriers begin cautiously testing Red Sea and Hormuz routes, insurance premiums normalize. Even then, full recovery takes 18 to 24 months from stabilization. Some carriers like CMA CGM have already begun limited Suez transits, and Maersk sent its first vessel through since early 2024 in December 2025. But a full-scale return requires sustained stability and confident insurance markets.
The optimistic case: a peace agreement leads to sustained stability, carriers begin cautiously testing Red Sea and Hormuz routes, insurance premiums normalize. Even then, full recovery takes 18 to 24 months from stabilization. The fragility of that optimism is already on record. In December 2025, Maersk sent its first vessel through the Suez Canal since early 2024, a cautious test run, with no further transits announced. Ten weeks later, the Iran war began and every major carrier suspended operations entirely. Most recently, one Maersk vessel transited the Strait of Hormuz under US military escort as part of Trump's "Project Freedom" initiative, only for Iranian drones to strike the UAE the same week. The window opens. Then it closes.
The more likely case, per PwC Nigeria and the Economist Intelligence Unit: the Middle East remains unstable well into 2027. Shipping operates in a two-tier system, with premium routes costing significantly more than reroutes via the Cape. BCA Research warned that the Iran conflict is likely to re-escalate later this year, even if oil markets stabilize temporarily. Nils Haupt, Senior Director for Corporate Communications at Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's largest container shipping companies, put it bluntly: when the war is officially over, and the bombardments are stopped, that does not mean that the war is over for logistics.
The routes have changed. The costs have changed. The relationships between trading blocs have shifted in ways not seen since the rules of global trade were written. Rules that Africa had only just begun to benefit from. No peace agreement will reverse the rewiring of global trade.
