Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: South Africa faces economic fallout and a diplomatic balancing act in the face of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, Africa’s largest refinery seeks to insulate Nigeria’s economy from global oil price shocks, and the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations is postponed until the summer.
Since the outbreak of the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, South Africa has navigated a precarious diplomatic landscape, seeking to mend strained relations with the United States despite its historically close relationship with Iran, a fellow BRICS+ member.
Pretoria has effectively taken a nonaligned stance on the conflict. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for peace and referred to the operation as an act of “[a]nticipatory self-defence” that is not permitted under the United Nations Charter.
Iranian-South African ties have been strong for decades. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran publicly supported the African National Congress’s (ANC) anti-apartheid movement, even as it privately sold vast amounts of oil to apartheid South Africa. Bilateral relations have remained strong despite the ANC having lost its 30-year parliamentary majority in 2024.
Yet recently, as the ANC has faced domestic pushback over its overt ties with Iran and sought to placate U.S. President Donald Trump, Pretoria has made subtle moves to distance itself from Tehran.
In February, Ramaphosa launched a probe into how Iran came to participate in recent China-led BRICS+ naval exercises off the coast of Cape Town. Ramaphosa reportedly ordered defense officials to limit Tehran’s status in the drills to an observer after its deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters in January, but Iran ended up being a full participant. The United States has publicly criticized South Africa for Iran’s involvement: “South Africa can’t lecture the world on ‘justice’ while cozying up to Iran,” the U.S. Embassy in South Africa wrote on X in January.
Meanwhile, Pretoria has attempted to strike an ever-elusive trade deal with Washington, especially after Trump’s global tariffs were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. Trump had imposed a 30 percent tariff on the country.
It’s a delicate balancing act that has proved to be tricky to navigate within the governing coalition. In January, South Africa abstained from a U.N. Human Rights Council vote to investigate Iran’s clampdown on protesters—a move that drew sharp criticism from other parties in Ramaphosa’s government of national unity, including the Democratic Alliance.
And following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, senior ANC officials visited the Iranian Embassy in Pretoria to pay their respects.
South African business leaders have also urged the government to adopt a “much more neutral stance” to protect the country’s economy and prevent Pretoria from being viewed as an “outlier” by international companies for its ties with Tehran.
“If investors start worrying about geopolitical fallout for South Africa, that is most unhelpful,” said Mary Vilakazi, the CEO of FirstRand, one of Africa’s largest banks.
Even before the war, South Africa was facing considerable economic challenges, though it has seen modest growth in recent years. Its unemployment rate has remained above 30 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the war began, South Africa’s currency, the rand, hit a three-month low on Monday. Already, the government has raised gas prices amid volatile global oil prices, which temporarily neared $120 a barrel on Monday before easing.
South Africa’s central bank also said last week that it would redraft its economic risk scenarios in response to the conflict’s impact on global energy supplies. Lesetja Kganyago, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, said that previous “adverse scenarios” are now outdated and must be replaced ahead of a March 26 interest rate decision.
Prolonged disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime corridor between Iran and Oman that carries 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, would have a particularly negative impact on an already strained South African economy.
Wednesday, March 11, to Thursday, March 12: The Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week takes place in Geneva, with programming focused on the future of global aid.
Thursday, March 12, to Friday, March 13: Senior ministers from the Southern African Development Community meet in Pretoria to discuss energy and industrialization projects.
Sunday, March 15: Presidential elections are held in the Republic of Congo.
Nigerian oil shocks. The Dangote refinery, Africa’s largest oil refinery, has said it will prioritize local supply over exports in order to insulate Nigeria’s economy from global oil price shocks—despite having raised its prices in recent days. The refinery said at a press conference on Monday that it would also look to buy more crude oil from the Nigerian government.
Aliko Dangote, who owns the refinery, is Africa’s richest person. He has often fought with President Bola Tinubu’s administration over the management of oil resources, though tensions appear to have temporarily cooled since Abuja halted issuing import licenses amid the war in Iran.
Last year, Dangote filed a lawsuit accusing Nigerian authorities of running a “mafia” that favored imports as he struggled to obtain crude oil for his facilities. He has also accused Farouk Ahmed, the former head of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, of skimming oil profits to pay for his children’s private education in Switzerland. (Ahmed resigned following public backlash but denies wrongdoing.)
Nigeria is Africa’s top crude oil producer but imports large quantities of refined fuel due to decades-long neglect of state-owned refineries. The $19 billion Dangote refinery, which launched in 2023 after nearly seven years of construction, was built in part to transform the country into a major exporter of petroleum products.
Lebanon strikes. The Ghanaian military said that four of its soldiers were injured following a missile attack on the headquarters of the country’s U.N. peacekeeping battalion in southern Lebanon on Friday. Ghana has formally lodged a complaint with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres over the incident.
Ghanaian authorities did not specify who launched the attacks, but Lebanese President Joseph Aoun directly blamed Israel for the strike. Around 700,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, as part of the wider conflict with Tehran.
South Sudan unrest. The death toll from a March 1 attack in South Sudan’s Ruweng Administrative Area has risen to at least 180 people, according to local officials and humanitarian organizations.
Ruweng’s information minister, James Monyluak Mijok, alleged that the armed youth who launched the attack were linked to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), a political party that denied involvement.
South Sudan has faced rising insecurity since a power-sharing arrangement broke down last year between President Salva Kiir and his sacked deputy, SPLA-IO leader Riek Machar, who is on trial for various charges, including treason. Over the past year, Kiir has arrested or fired dozens of his top officials in his bid to consolidate power.
In that same period, government forces in South Sudan have escalated ethnically targeted attacks on civilian communities as part of a wider crackdown on opposition groups and allied militias. A U.N. report released last week found that Uganda helped Kiir’s government carry out bombings of opposition areas in March 2025 that badly burned dozens of civilians, including children.
WAFCON postponed. The 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations was postponed last week, less than two weeks before it was due to begin in Morocco. The soccer tournament is now scheduled to take place between July 25 and Aug. 16.
The Confederation of African Football cited “certain unforeseen circumstances” as the reason for the rescheduling. Reports have suggested that the delay may be due to a lack of logistical preparation following crowd violence at the men’s final in January and a request from the Royal Moroccan Football Federation to avoid scheduling conflicts with its domestic league.
South African officials previously expressed a willingness to step in as alternative hosts if Morocco withdrew. So far, there has been no indication that the host nation will change.
Network expansion. Ethiopia’s state-owned telecommunications company, Ethio Telecom, signed a partnership with Swedish network provider Ericsson on Friday to expand 4G internet coverage in Ethiopia to reach 85 percent of the population. Currently, around 79 percent of Ethiopians remain unconnected to the internet due to poor infrastructure.
Ramaphosa speaks up. In a New York Times interview with John Eligon and Zimasa Matiwane, Ramaphosa recently described Trump’s policy of granting refugee status to white Afrikaners as “racist.” Ramaphosa called Trump “uninformed” and said that he views the country through a “foggy lens” that ignores South Africa’s history of apartheid.
Ramaphosa stated that despite the “demeaning” nature of recent encounters with Washington, Pretoria would persist in its efforts to improve the bilateral relationship. “We are rather amazed at the attention he [Trump] gives to us. We are a small country, and we are no threat to the United States,” he said.
Haftar’s grip. In the Guardian, Anas El Gomati argues that the situation in Libya—where warlord Khalifa Haftar controls “everything that matters”—serves as a cautionary tale of the unintended consequences of foreign intervention.
Following the 2011 NATO-backed removal of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya fractured, leading to the establishment of two rival governments: a U.N.-recognized administration in Tripoli and eastern forces controlled by Haftar, the country’s most powerful man.
“Every intervention makes the same promise: remove the dictator and the people will be free,” El Gomati writes. “Libya is what happens when the dictator is removed and the people are forgotten.”
