IN SHORT: The African Union has scheduled a Joint Extraordinary Specialised Technical Committee session on the Continental Response to Fertilizer Market Disruption and Food System Risk Arising from Geopolitical Conflict in the Middle East for May 20-22. The session is the AU’s first extraordinary convening specifically addressing the food security dimension of the Hormuz conflict, which has driven fertiliser prices to multi-year highs and disrupted the agricultural input supply chains that most African farmers depend on for the current planting season.
The African Union has recognised what the oil price headlines have obscured: the Hormuz conflict’s most consequential impact on Africa may not be fuel prices but food prices, and the continent’s agricultural system is facing a fertiliser supply shock that, if not addressed in the next 60 days, will reduce 2026 harvest yields in ways that fuel no amount of emergency summitry can reverse.
The extraordinary STC session, confirmed on the AU website for May 20-22, was called specifically in response to the fertiliser and food system risks arising from the Iran-US conflict and its disruption of Middle Eastern supply chains. It convenes one week after the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi and the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, in a week that will test whether the institutional urgency visible in high-level summitry translates into supply chain interventions at farm level.
- Africa imports approximately 85% of its fertiliser from external sources, with a substantial portion of that supply originating from or transiting through the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz carries not only oil and gas but also ammonia, urea and other nitrogen fertilisers produced in Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The conflict that has effectively closed the strait to commercial shipping has therefore simultaneously disrupted Africa’s fuel supply chains and its agricultural input supply chains, creating a compound shock that is more damaging than either disruption alone.
- Fertiliser timing is not forgiving. African planting seasons are calendar-driven by rainfall patterns that do not wait for diplomatic solutions to geopolitical crises. In East Africa, the long rains planting season runs from March to June. In West Africa, the main planting season runs from April to July. Fertiliser that does not reach smallholder farmers during those windows does not improve yields in 2026. It becomes a 2027 problem at best. The AU’s May 20-22 session is at the edge of the critical window for influencing current season outcomes in East Africa and within it for West Africa.
- Dangote Industries flagged the fertiliser dimension explicitly in its recent investment communications, noting that the Dangote Fertiliser Plant in Lagos, Africa’s largest urea fertiliser facility at 3 million tonnes per year, has a role to play in substituting for disrupted Middle East supplies. The plant’s capacity to export to other African markets, if supply chain logistics can be arranged at scale, is one of the few immediate continental supply responses available. But the plant’s output covers a fraction of Africa’s total fertiliser import requirement.
- The extraordinary session will bring together AU member state agriculture ministers, trade ministers, development finance institutions and food security agencies to assess the scale of the disruption, identify emergency procurement options, and develop a coordinated continental response. Previous AU food security summits have produced declarations of intent; this one is being called as an emergency response to an active crisis, which gives it a different mandate and a different expectation of output.
- The World Food Programme and FAO have both issued warnings about food security risks in East and Central Africa that predate the Hormuz conflict. Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and the DRC were all classified as having significant food insecurity populations before the conflict began. The fertiliser shock compounds already stressed food systems in countries that have the least fiscal capacity to absorb higher input costs or compensate farmers for reduced yields.
- The broader context is that Africa’s food import bill was already rising before the Hormuz crisis. The Ukraine war drove wheat and sunflower oil prices higher. Climate shocks reduced domestic production in multiple seasons. Now the fertiliser supply chain disruption threatens to reduce the 2026 harvest at the worst possible moment. The AU’s decision to convene an extraordinary session signals that the institutional recognition of this risk has crossed the threshold that triggers formal multilateral response.
The AU website describes the session as addressing “Fertilizer Market Disruption and Food System Risk Arising from Geopolitical Conflict in the Middle East,” language that makes the causal connection between the Hormuz war and Africa’s food supply explicitly institutional.
The Bigger Picture: The Hormuz conflict has two African crises running in parallel. The first, fuel prices and fiscal pressure, is visible, measured in petrol pump prices and central bank communiqués, and generating daily headlines. The second, fertiliser supply disruption and potential harvest shortfalls, is less visible, measured in agronomic timing windows and import volume data, and generating fewer headlines but potentially more human cost. Hundreds of millions of Africans are smallholder farmers whose caloric security depends on fertiliser-supported yields. A 20% reduction in yields from fertiliser shortfalls affects food prices, rural incomes, nutrition outcomes and political stability across dozens of countries simultaneously. The AU’s extraordinary session is convening at precisely the right moment. Whether it produces the right outputs in the right timeframe is the question that will determine whether May 2026’s agricultural window is salvaged or lost.
Source: African Union, May 14, 2026
