A recent disruption in the Strait of Hormuz caused a 19 per cent increase in Middle East urea prices. This single corridor transports about one-third of the world's nitrogen-based fertilisers. In African markets, the price of urea doubled from $400 to $850 per tonne within a week.
This sharp price increase makes food more expensive for African households, where food already consumes about half of daily spending. When fertiliser costs rise, food prices quickly follow, narrowing the gap between difficult and hungry seasons. This incident is the third major fertiliser shock in five years, following the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
This recurring vulnerability exposes Africa's structural dependence on global supply chains for critical agricultural inputs. The continent's reliance means distant conflicts quickly become domestic emergencies, impacting millions of smallholder farmers and consumers. This situation underscores the urgent need for robust, localised solutions to ensure food security across Africa.
Experts argue that Africa possesses the necessary technologies, entrepreneurs, and institutional platforms to address this challenge. For instance, North Africa holds approximately 78 per cent of the world’s phosphate reserves. African fertiliser production has also grown by 146 per cent since 2002, demonstrating existing capacity and potential.
The core problem lies in the failure to align financing, policy design, and market structures with these existing assets. There is a critical need to make farming profitable enough to ensure supply reliably meets demand. Improving nutrient use efficiency and adopting nature-based nutrient sourcing can boost productivity and reduce costs for smallholder farmers.
Africa's binding constraint is nitrogen, a nutrient essential for about 70 per cent of crop yield in most African soils. Nitrogen production relies heavily on natural gas, which Africa has in abundance. Countries like Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Mozambique, Tunisia, and Senegal possess significant gas reserves, yet they largely produce nitrogen in isolation or not at all.
A coordinated continental nitrogen agenda is crucial, focusing on investment in production that prioritises African farmers over export markets. This should integrate with emerging green-ammonia initiatives, building both synthetic nitrogen capacity and cleaner, renewable pathways for the future. Resilience requires an integrated soil-health system, combining locally produced mineral and organic inputs efficiently.
To achieve this, governments must channel investment into local and regional production, strategic reserves, and efficient trade corridors. They should also replace blanket subsidies with targeted, digitally delivered support for smallholder farmers, many of whom are women. The private sector needs support to build manufacturing and blending capacity, provide fertiliser financing, and develop distribution networks.
Dangote's $7 billion regional expansion, aiming to become the world's largest urea platform, exemplifies what African capital can achieve. Development finance institutions can further de-risk and catalyse these investments. The current easing of the Gulf crisis presents a critical opportunity to shift Africa's fertiliser agenda from emergency response to structural transformation, creating an affordable, climate-smart, regionally integrated, and sovereign ecosystem.