John Karani is Secretary General of the African Supply Chain Confederation (ASCON)
The Middle East conflict restructured Africa’s import costs permanently. From Cairo to Cape Town and Accra to Kinshasa, no business was untouched. Africa’s supply chain leaders must now act – before the next disruption arrives.
When Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, African business leaders watched the news with concern but did not think to open their procurement systems. This was costly as, within three months, every import invoice across the continent was more expensive.
The chain of events was swift. As commercial vessels in the Red Sea came under attack, the world’s major shipping lines rerouted all vessels around the Cape of Good Hope while Lloyd’s of London declared the Red Sea a war zone. War risk insurance premiums spiked 500 to 1,000% overnight. The Suez Canal shortcut, which most of Africa’s Asian imports depended on, was effectively closed to commercial traffic.
As a result, freight rates from Asia to East Africa rose from around $1,500 per container to over $6,000 while transit times stretched by 14 to 21 days. Safety stock policies designed for a stable world suddenly needed to double. These dollar costs arrived as African currencies were depreciating, worsening the local impact.
“This crisis did not create Africa’s supply chain vulnerabilities. It revealed them.”
FIVE REGIONS. FIVE DIFFERENT BATTLES.
Africa is not one supply chain – and this crisis proved it. Egypt’s experience was unique: businesses faced rising import costs while the country simultaneously lost Suez Canal transit revenues, a key source of foreign exchange. Two separate shocks, hitting at once.
West Africa’s oil producers, Nigeria and Ghana, benefited from higher Brent crude prices, but still import most of their fuel and manufactured goods. The gains were offset by rising costs – and it was businesses, not government accounts, that felt the freight bill.
Central Africa’s exposure had a cruel irony. The Democratic Republic of Congo – which holds over 70% of global cobalt and vast coltan reserves powering the electric vehicle boom – saw its own mining operations disrupted by the same supply chain shock it helps drive.
East Africa was hit hardest, as the Red Sea is the main route for Asian goods. Mombasa and Dar es Salaam ports clogged up, while a weaker Kenya shilling pushed freight costs even higher in local terms.
South Africa’s story was the continent’s most instructive counterpoint. Its ports sit directly on the Cape rerouting corridor – in principle, a commercial opportunity. In practice, infrastructure constraints, port efficiency challenges, and equipment deficits meant South Africa captured only a fraction of the potential benefit.
Pharmaceutical stockouts across multiple markets underscored the human cost of supply chain disruption – one that doesn’t show up in freight rate tables. The crisis made clear that mineral wealth cannot shield people from rising medicine and food costs, and that Africa’s infrastructure gap is real.
WHAT EVERY AFRICAN LEADER MUST DO NOW
Six lessons apply across every country, every sector, and every institution.
- Know where your goods come from – through to source. Most African organisations don’t know the ultimate source of products, leading to stockouts when major geopolitical events disrupt key supply routes.
- Diversify your sources. Single-origin dependency is not a procurement preference – it is a balance sheet risk. The Africa Continental Free Trade Area gives African buyers access to 1.4 billion people across 54 countries. Building African supplier relationships is now a strategic imperative, not an aspiration.
- Read your contracts. Every supply agreement for imported goods should be reviewed for insurance escalation provisions before the next disruption – not during it – else conflict will cost them millions.
- Hold more stock. The cost of carrying three extra weeks of safety stock is always lower than the cost of a production stoppage or a medicine stockout. Boards need to endorse the working capital that this will require.
- Connect supply chain risk to currency risk. The freight increase and the currency depreciation arrived together and compounded each other. Supply chain teams and finance teams must model total landed cost jointly – not in separate silos.
- Put geopolitical risk on the board agenda. A conflict in the Middle East restructured Africa’s import cost base in ninety days – there is no defensible reason for boards to leave geopolitical risks on the agenda.
- “The cost of resilience is always lower than the cost of a crisis. Africa now has the invoice to prove it.”
AFRICA’S MOMENT
In this pain lies an opportunity Africa cannot afford to miss. Global buyers are moving away from Asian supply chains exposed to the Red Sea. Africa – with its resources, growing manufacturing base, and the AfCFTA framework – is on their shortlist. Morocco, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, and South Africa are already attracting production investment that was previously anchored in Asia.
Supply chain leaders who build African supplier capacity, qualify local alternatives, and push for the infrastructure and trade reforms that make intra-African trade competitive will hold a structural advantage over the next decade. While the Red Sea will reopen and freight rates will normalise, this crisis has exposed long-standing vulnerabilities.
The next disruption is already forming – and those who wait will find themselves making the same case at a higher cost, rather than being ready.
The supply chain leaders who will define Africa’s next decade are not the ones who survived this disruption – they are the ones who led through it and built something better on the other side.
