The current disruptions across the Gulf (spanning the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea) have revealed a deeper structural condition affecting Africa: a governance failure embedded in the very architecture through which the continent’s logistics flows are integrated into global trade systems. What is unfolding in 2026 is not only logistical volatility but systemic reconfiguration. Security risks in the Red Sea have forced sustained rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10–20 days to Asia–Africa and Asia–Europe trade lanes, while amplifying freight rates, insurance premia, and energy costs. At the same time, instability in the Gulf has disrupted fertilizer supply chains, tightened energy flows, and constrained air cargo capacity through key aviation hubs. The cumulative effect is not delay, but distortion: inflationary pressure in food-importing economies, stress on humanitarian corridors in the Horn of Africa, and renewed external fragility in import-dependent economies. Yet the critical issue is not disruption itself. It is where disruption is governed.

Leggi tutto...

At the margins of the World Trade Organization’s MC14 in Yaoundé, a quiet idea started to took shape: Africa and Latin America may be moving toward a new axis of global trade. South–South trade now accounts for roughly a quarter of global flows, yet exchanges between these two regions remain minimal. The real constraint is not geography, but weak logistics: limited shipping routes, thin air links, and fragmented digital systems. In today’s economy, distance is defined by connectivity. What makes this alignment plausible is a deeper compatibility. Both regions operate through hybrid economic systems where formal markets coexist with trust-based, relational networks. This shared logic (often overlooked in conventional trade analysis) can facilitate business linkages where institutional frameworks alone fall short. Read our article on Latinoamérica21 (available also in Spanish and Portuguese).