Doha, Qatar – African countries are feeling the economic fallout from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, with rising fuel and fertiliser prices threatening to drive up food costs, according to trade ministers from the region and the United Nations’ top trade official. The crisis around the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States and Israel’s war on Iran needs to be resolved “sooner rather than later”, Luz Maria de la Mora, director of the Division on International Trade and Commodities at UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told Al Jazeera at the World Investment Forum on Monday. She warned that soaring fertiliser prices could affect harvests next year.
Against this backdrop, Doha hosted UNCTAD’s World Investment Forum on October 25 and 26, bringing together heads of state, policymakers, CEOs and investors to discuss global investment and sustainable development. The Strait of Hormuz’s disruption has rippled through African economies. In Zimbabwe, rising fuel and fertiliser prices are a critical concern in a country where more than 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture, Monica Mutsvangwa, the country’s minister of women affairs, community, small and medium enterprise development, told Al Jazeera.
Uganda, another heavily agrarian economy, has also been hit, with fuel prices more than doubling, Sanjay Tanna, the country’s minister of trade, industry and cooperatives, told Al Jazeera. The impact extends beyond the immediate cost of energy. Rising oil prices have disrupted supply chains, with effects lasting longer than anticipated, according to de la Mora.
The shock has also exposed differences in how African economies weather global disruption. Uganda’s reliance on subsistence farming has helped cushion the impact, with domestic food production offering some protection from international market volatility, said Tanna. But the country has not been insulated from financial pressures: its currency has lost 10 percent of its value against the US dollar, the minister said.
The Ugandan shilling has steadily declined since mid-2026. For Zimbabwe, the crisis has reinforced the importance of attracting investment while maintaining economic ties across geopolitical divides. Amid the simmering trade war between the US and China, Harare considers itself a potential partner to investors from either side, Mutsvangwa said.
But attracting foreign capital remains a challenge for developing economies, with investment concentrated in a relatively small number of countries. That concentration is “very understandable”, de la Mora said, arguing that investors need confidence that their money will generate returns. Capital needs to have certainty that its investment is going to yield returns and it’s going to come to fruition,” she said.
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