Iran War Sends Oil Past $100. Nigeria and Angola Are Winning. Here Is Who Is Not.

A US-Israeli military strike on Iran that began on February 28 has sent crude oil prices surging toward $100 a barrel, splitting Africa’s biggest economies into clear winners and losers. Nigeria and Angola are seeing windfall revenues and strengthening currencies. South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, and Kenya are absorbing a pure cost shock with no production upside, no subsidy buffer, and a rate-cutting cycle that was just starting to deliver relief now hanging in the balance.

US and Israeli forces struck multiple Iranian targets in the early hours of February 28, killing Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and triggering retaliatory attacks across the Gulf region. Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil shipments pass daily, sending ships anchoring off regional coasts and pushing risk premiums sharply into oil markets
Crude prices surged immediately after the strikes, with gold climbing above $5,400 per ounce as investors fled to safe havens. JPMorgan analysts warned that a prolonged conflict could push crude above $100 per barrel. QatarEnergy separately confirmed it had halted LNG production, compounding the energy supply shock beyond oil alone
Winner: Nigeria. As Africa’s largest crude producer, higher oil prices boost export revenues, strengthen FAAC allocations, and improve foreign exchange inflows at a time when the naira has already emerged as one of Africa’s two strongest-performing currencies in early 2026. The 2026 budget benchmark stands at $64.85 per barrel, meaning every dollar above that benchmark goes straight to fiscal headroom. The risk is the pass-through: Nigeria scrapped its fuel subsidy in 2023, meaning higher crude costs also feed directly into pump prices. Petrol was already selling between N824 and N880 per litre before the strikes. Analysts project prices must rise further if crude approaches $90 per barrel, and the Dangote Refinery, which cut its ex-depot price to N774 in February, may be forced to reverse that reduction
Winner: Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Both economies earn the bulk of government revenue from crude exports and will see OPEC-level windfalls as prices climb. Angola, which cut its policy rate by 100 basis points to 17.5% in its first MPC meeting of 2026 as inflation cooled, now has fiscal breathing room that most African peers cannot match. Equatorial Guinea benefits similarly on the revenue side. The shared caveat is that both countries face the same domestic fuel cost pass-through as Nigeria if the conflict persists
Loser: South Africa. With no oil production of its own, South Africa absorbs the import price surge in full. Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop calculated that if oil holds near $80 per barrel with the rand at current levels, fuel prices could rise roughly 9% month-on-month in March, adding approximately 0.4 percentage points to CPI inflation and potentially lifting year-on-year inflation to 3.3% against a prior 2.9% forecast. That narrows the South African Reserve Bank’s room to cut rates further, threatening to stall credit growth recovery. The partial offset: South Africa’s gold miners are surging. Gold Fields advanced over 4%, Harmony Gold over 5%, and DRDGold rose close to 8% in Monday trade as investors piled into the metal, and Sasol also stands to benefit from higher energy prices
Loser: Egypt. Egypt cut its policy rate by 100 basis points to 19% as part of one of Africa’s most significant easing cycles (725 basis points cumulatively between February and December 2025), bringing inflation from a peak of 38% in September 2023 down to 11.9% in January 2026. That disinflation took two years of painful monetary tightening and is now directly threatened. Egypt is a net importer of refined products and deeply exposed to regional shipping route disruption, meaning both energy costs and import supply chains face simultaneous pressure
Loser: Ghana and Kenya. Ghana, where the cedi has been appreciating and rate cuts are underway following its debt restructuring, faces amplified exposure through fuel import costs and the inflationary ripple into food and transport. Ghana’s 70% dependence on imports for many consumer goods means oil-driven price shocks transmit faster than in larger production economies. Kenya, which recorded a six-month low in annual inflation of 4.3% in February and was widely expected to cut rates further, now faces the same inflation pressure just as its case for easing was strongest. North-West University economist Professor Raymond Parsons warned that these economies must not underestimate the potential negative implications that could yet unfold
The Strait of Hormuz threat is the scenario that separates a manageable price spike from a structural crisis. Disruption would not only push oil above $100 but also create shipping delays, insurance surcharges, and supply bottlenecks across fertiliser, grain, machinery, and industrial inputs that Africa’s economies depend on for agriculture and manufacturing, compounding the shock well beyond fuel alone
Africa’s rate-cutting cycle, which saw six of nine major economies cut rates in their first MPC meetings of 2026 with the World Bank describing it as a continental pivot toward easing, is now at direct risk. Central banks from Accra to Cairo preparing further cuts may pause or reverse course if oil-driven inflation re-accelerates, delaying the credit growth revival that businesses and households were counting on across 2026

The clearest way to understand this shock is to separate Africa’s oil producers from its oil importers. Producers get a revenue windfall that improves fiscal positions, strengthens currencies, and raises the prospect of faster debt repayment or social spending. Importers get a pure cost shock: higher fuel prices, higher food prices, higher transport costs, and tighter monetary policy to contain the inflation, all arriving simultaneously with no offsetting revenue gain. The complication for producers is that subsidy removal, which international lenders championed for years as essential fiscal reform, has removed the buffer that used to protect consumers from global price swings. Nigeria now earns more from each barrel it exports and pays more for each litre its citizens consume. That is not a contradiction but it is a political tension that governments will have to manage carefully, particularly in Nigeria where pump prices are still a live political issue. The gold story for South Africa is real but partial: mining revenues improve, the JSE’s resources sector gains, but the broader economy of 60 million people absorbs higher fuel and food costs that the gold windfall cannot fully offset at the household level.

The Bigger Picture: Africa’s biggest economies entered 2026 in the best macroeconomic shape they had seen for several years. Inflation was falling, currencies were stabilising, rates were coming down, and the continent’s private sector was returning to expansion. The Middle East conflict arriving at precisely this moment is a reminder of how deeply African economies remain exposed to external shocks they cannot control. The Strait of Hormuz is 6,000 kilometres from Lagos and 7,000 from Johannesburg, but if it closes, fuel queues will form within weeks. The asymmetry is stark: it takes years of fiscal discipline, painful subsidy reforms, and monetary tightening to build a credible macroeconomic recovery, and it takes one fortnight of geopolitical escalation to put all of that progress under pressure. Nigeria’s response in the coming weeks will be the most closely watched. If Abuja can use the crude windfall to build reserves and accelerate Dangote Refinery’s output ramp rather than allowing pump prices to spike, it turns a vulnerability into a structural upgrade. If it cannot, the gains of the past two years narrow fast. For the continent’s oil importers, the question is not whether they will feel pain but how much they can limit through reserve management, exchange rate policy, and the speed with which the conflict either de-escalates or entrenches.