Beyond Oil: What the Iran and Ukraine Wars Teach Us About East Africa's Food Exports

Method: 118 numbered sources, each opened and read, alongside FarmMoja's own 2026 booking and quality-control records. Researched and written between 1 and 3 October 2026. Read the method and caveats.

When people ask what the wars in Ukraine and Iran have done to Africa, the answer usually begins with oil. This article starts there, then follows the same two straits, the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, to the places the fuel story does not reach: a fertilizer depot in the North Rift, a tea warehouse in Mombasa, a flower farm in Naivasha, a slaughterhouse in Athi River, and a two-acre avocado orchard in Kericho. For East African agriculture the shock arrived twice, through what farmers buy and through what they sell. The cost is measured in days of transit and in the absence of insurance, not only in dollars per barrel, and the people carrying it are mostly young.

The lens people reach for: oil, gas and two chokepoints

On 28 February 2026, United States and Israeli strikes on Iran opened a new war, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. The first numbers quoted everywhere were about fuel, and they deserved to be. Hormuz carries about 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil, a fifth of global LNG and close to a third of seaborne LPG^1,2,3. The other strait, the Bab el-Mandeb at the mouth of the Red Sea, had already been under Houthi attack since November 2023; before those attacks the Red Sea and Suez route carried about 12% of seaborne oil, 12 to 15% of world trade and a quarter to a third of all container traffic^4,5.

The fuel shock was real. Brent went from $72 to $118 a barrel in March 2026, the largest monthly rise on record, and peaked at $126^6,7. Hormuz traffic fell by about 95%, from roughly 100 ships a day to about five, and war-risk cover for a Gulf transit climbed to 7.5 to 10% of a ship's hull value, against 0.125% before the war^3,8. Kenya felt it at the pump within six weeks: diesel went from KSh 166.54 a litre in March to KSh 242.92 in May, a 46% jump, and Treasury told Parliament the landed cost of diesel had risen more than 80%^9,10. A 13 kg cooking-gas refill averaged about KSh 3,470 by May¹¹.

That is where most analysis stops. For a farmer in Kericho, fuel is the smallest of the three shocks.

The lens they miss: Africa's food system runs on imported inputs

The two wars reached African agriculture through different doors. Ukraine hit what farmers buy. The Gulf hit what they buy and what they sell.

Fertilizer

Sub-Saharan Africa imports about 80% of its fertilizer¹². Before 2022, Russia and Belarus supplied 41% of the world's traded potash and Russia 14% of its urea¹³. When the invasion came, the World Bank's fertilizer price index rose from 152 in 2021 to 236 in 2022, and the fertilizer research body IFDC estimated that fertilizer use in the region fell by as much as a quarter^14,13.

The Gulf was the second blow. The Strait of Hormuz carries nearly a quarter of world urea exports, and about 26% of Kenya's fertilizer imports pass through it, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar the main nitrogen suppliers to the national subsidy programme^15,16. Within six weeks of the closure urea had passed $850 a tonne, up 80% on February, and the index hit 209 in April, its highest since 2022^15,17. FAO named Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt and Mozambique among the most exposed countries¹⁸. A Kisumu farmer reported paying about KSh 8,000 for a 50 kg bag of urea in March against roughly KSh 6,000 in January, and National Cereals and Produce Board depots ran short in the North Rift even as the subsidised price was cut to KSh 2,000^16,19. Prices have since fallen back: the index was 146 in August, with urea at $390 a tonne²⁰. The damage is in the timing. The spike landed exactly on the long-rains planting window, when the fertilizer is applied.

The spike landed exactly on the long-rains planting window, when the fertilizer is applied.

Wheat

Before the invasion Africa sourced 32% of its wheat imports from Russia and 12% from Ukraine; 25 countries took more than a third of their wheat from the pair²¹. Kenya imports about 90% of its wheat, 2.5 million tonnes in 2025/26, half of it from Russia²². The Black Sea Grain Initiative moved 32.8 million tonnes before it ended in July 2023, but only 12% of that went to Africa²³. In August 2026 both ends of the corridor came under attack at once: no ships entered Greater Odesa in early August and all three grain terminals at Novorossiysk, Russia's main export port, stopped²⁴. FAO's cereal price index hit 122.8 in September, up 17% on a year earlier²⁵.

Cooking oil

Ukraine normally supplies close to half of the world's sunflower oil exports²⁶. Kenya imports more than 90% of its cooking oil, most of it palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, so the Ukraine effect arrived as a global price, not a missing cargo²⁷. A litre of cooking oil cost KSh 358 in July 2026, the highest since the 2022 crisis peak of KSh 366²⁸.

Where it lands

The FAO Food Price Index reached 136.0 in September 2026, approaching a four-year high and 15% below its March 2022 peak, with FAO naming Hormuz and the Black Sea as causes²⁹. Kenya's food inflation was 9.5% in September against a 6.8% headline rate³⁰. The World Food Programme projected up to 45 million more people in acute food insecurity from the 2026 shock, almost exactly the 47 million it projected after the 2022 invasion^31,32.

Days, not dollars: routes, the Red Sea on paper, and the insurance wall

For an exporter of fresh produce the unit of damage is the day. A tanker delayed three weeks loses money; an avocado delayed three weeks is thrown away on arrival.

The long way to Europe

When the Red Sea closed, Mombasa to Rotterdam went from 18 to 22 days through Suez to 37 to 45 days around the Cape of Good Hope, and forwarders warned of cold-chain breaks and higher rejection rates on arrival^33,34. In 2024 about 96% of Asia-Europe container capacity went around the Cape³⁵. Kenya's largest listed agricultural group, Sasini, shipped 71 containers of avocados in its 2024 financial year and 22 in 2025, cited the near-doubling of transit times, and put its avocado processing plant up for sale³⁶.

The short way to the Gulf, then no way

The Gulf was Kenya's hedge: a direct Mombasa to Jebel Ali sailing took about ten days³⁷. When Hormuz closed, carriers dropped Jebel Ali from their rotations, 124 vessels carrying 168,000 containers were trapped inside the Gulf, and the ports on the Gulf of Oman side of the Hajar mountains, Khor Fakkan, Fujairah and Sohar, became landbridge gateways with cargo trucked 170 to 190 km over the mountains to Dubai^38,39,40. Maersk still charges an emergency rate of $3,800 per refrigerated container on Gulf cargo, plus $1,000 for any container that transits Hormuz; MSC's war-risk surcharge on the same lane is $4,000 per reefer^41,42. Four tankers were hit by projectiles in the strait on 28 and 29 September, one of them damaged within sight of Khor Fakkan, and the Joint Maritime Information Centre rates the Hormuz threat "severe"⁴³.

The Red Sea on paper and on the water

On 11 and 12 August a cargo ship was struck twice in the Bab el-Mandeb and six crew were killed, the first deadly attack there in a year; on 24 August a Saudi tanker was hit by a ballistic missile off Yanbu; in mid-September the Houthis took Mocha and Perim Island, completing their control of Yemen's Red Sea coast, 20 km from Africa^49,50,51. The 1 October maritime advisory rates the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb threat "substantial", with further attacks "a strong possibility", and ships are queuing for naval escorts the European mission cannot supply^43,52. Maersk's own precedent is instructive: it went back through Suez in February 2026 and returned to the Cape within a month⁵³. A reopening that depends on no one firing is not a route an exporter can plan a harvest around.

The insurance wall

The least visible cost is the one that stops the trade. Cargo war-risk cover, the policy on the fruit rather than the ship, was repriced within days of the strikes: underwriters issued 48-hour and seven-day cancellation notices, and war-zone cargo rates rose to about 1% of shipment value against a normal 0.05 to 0.2%⁵⁴. Annual cargo war policies for the Gulf stopped being written at all; cover became "voyage-by-voyage basis only"⁵⁵. Lloyd's Joint War Committee added Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar to its listed areas in March, which triggers the right to cancel or reprice⁵⁶.

In our own correspondence this season, cover for consignments into the Gulf was either unavailable or quoted at levels that made the shipment uneconomic.

FarmMoja

A bank will not lend working capital against an uninsured cargo; a buyer will not pay in advance for fruit that may never clear a strait. For an exporter whose growers are paid at harvest and whose buyer pays on arrival, the insurance gap becomes a working-capital gap, and the working-capital gap decides whether the next container is packed. Afreximbank's $10 billion Gulf crisis facility and the African Development Bank's warning that Africa's trade-finance gap could widen to over $86 billion by 2027 show the same problem at continental scale^57,58.

Scroll sideways to see the full table.

Days and dollars per lane. Mombasa to Rotterdam went from 18 to 22 days via Suez to 37 to 45 days via the Cape. Mombasa to the UAE went from about 10 days direct to 14 to 17 days to Khor Fakkan plus a road leg.

Kenya's perishable exports: what used to go, and what happens now

Kenya's horticulture earnings fell from $1.21 billion in 2023 to $1.06 billion in 2024, and the Principal Secretary for Agriculture blamed Red Sea rerouting⁵⁹. The Netherlands alone takes about 35% of horticulture value; the United Arab Emirates is the third market⁶⁰. Kenya's exports to the UAE went from over KSh 101 billion in 2024 to KSh 77.8 billion in 2025, then fell 39.5% year on year in the first four months of 2026, hitting a 33-month low in April before recovering in July^61,62,63. Exports to the Middle East as a whole fell 12% in 2025 to KSh 144 billion, and to Far East Asia by 14%, before the Hormuz closure⁶⁴. The Trade Cabinet Secretary put KSh 164.6 billion a year of Middle East exports at risk in April⁶⁵.

Five export chains, one by one. Meat exports to the Gulf fell below 5% of normal, 8 m kg of tea were stranded at Mombasa in March 2026, and flower growers lost $4.8 m in three weeks.

Three things stand out. Kenya's Gulf trade was built as the fast, short-transit alternative to Europe, and in 2026 it broke first. The damage lands hardest on the most perishable and most labour-intensive chains, which is where young Kenyans work. And every closure has redrawn the map: Istanbul instead of Doha for flowers, Khor Fakkan instead of Jebel Ali for fruit, the Cape instead of Suez for tea, and Asia instead of Europe for avocados.

The new map: Asia and the routes that avoid both straits

A ship leaving Mombasa for Singapore crosses the Indian Ocean and touches neither Hormuz nor the Bab el-Mandeb^83,84. That geography is why Kenya's trade diplomacy with Asia, slow for a decade, suddenly matters for a farmer.

China

Kenya signed a fresh-avocado phytosanitary protocol with China in January 2022 and shipped the first fruit that August, with 15 orchards and nine packhouses approved at launch⁸⁵. Volumes have swung: 4,300 t in 2023, under 2,000 t in 2024, then up 137% in 2025^86,87,80. On 24 March 2026 Kenya signed a China-Kenya Early Harvest Arrangement giving zero-tariff treatment on 100% of tariff lines, in force from 1 May 2026 under China's wider zero-tariff policy for African countries^88,89. In the four months after it took effect, Kenyan avocado shipments to China rose 63% to 3,760 t⁸¹.

Growing that volume is harder than the tariff change suggests, because China's requirements are different in kind from Europe's or the Gulf's, not simply stricter. Only Hass qualifies. Every orchard and every packhouse must be registered with both KEPHIS and China's General Administration of Customs (GACC), so a smallholder-sourced chain has to register and audit hundreds of individual orchards rather than one packhouse. Growers must run a documented integrated pest management plan against nine named pests, three of them fruit flies, and consignments must be fumigated with methyl bromide under KEPHIS supervision before departure, a treatment Europe does not require and one that shortens shelf life^117,118. GACC inspects 2% of each batch, with a minimum of 1,200 fruit, and a single interception can suspend a packhouse¹¹⁸. On top of the compliance cost sits the transit: the CMA CGM service from Mombasa transships at Singapore and quotes 48 days to Qingdao, a Cape-detour length of voyage for a Hass avocado, and the main reason the 2024 shipments fell 80%, a drop partly attributed to quality and maturity complaints^90,91,87. Chinese buyers also trade on different terms, with less of the consignment and advance-payment practice Kenyan exporters know from the Gulf and Europe. The market is open and the tariff is gone; what remains is a compliance and cold-chain build that most Kenyan exporters, ourselves included, have not yet completed.

Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong

In November 2025 Kenya and Malaysia exchanged four agreements that Kenyan reporting says give tea, coffee, flowers, avocados and beef duty-free access; the underlying instrument has not been published and the avocado phytosanitary protocol that Malaysia audited in 2022 has not been confirmed as concluded^92,93. Trade is small but moving: Kenyan avocado exports to Malaysia doubled from 369 t in 2023 to 633 t in 2024, Singapore took 384 t and Hong Kong 72 t⁹⁴. Singapore's value is as the transshipment hub on every Mombasa to Asia rotation and as a strict, predictable regulator: a licensed importer, a permit per consignment, pesticide-residue compliance and producer labelling⁹⁵. For a Kenyan exporter the Singapore-Malaysia-Hong Kong corridor is less a market than a route into one: Port Klang and Singapore sit on the way to China, and fruit cleared for one is halfway cleared for the others.

India

India approved Kenyan avocados in August 2023 after five years of talks, with a 30% duty and a fumigation or cold-treatment requirement⁹⁶. Indian imports doubled to about 19,300 t in 2025, but Tanzania supplies roughly 90% of them, helped by duty-free access and a ten-day transit; Kenya fills the early and late windows⁹⁷. Kenya and India opened trade-agreement negotiations in January 2026 and held a joint trade committee in Nairobi in April^98,99. A new weekly Interasia service linking Nhava Sheva, Mundra, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa starts in mid-October 2026¹⁰⁰.

Where this leaves Kenyan exporters

Asia is a real third route, and the zero-tariff arrangement with China is the most valuable market-access change Kenya has had since the EU Economic Partnership Agreement. In 2025, before Hormuz, Kenya's exports to Far East Asia nevertheless fell 14%⁶⁴, and the Trade Cabinet Secretary said in April that the crisis was limiting access to Asia as well, through lost Gulf air hubs and higher freight and insurance⁶⁵. The route exists. The exporters trying to use it are doing so without insurance and with thin working capital.

Who absorbs the shock: jobs at risk across the value chain

Nobody publishes a count of Kenyan jobs lost to the Hormuz closure. What exists is sector employment on one side and export destination shares on the other. Putting them together gives a first-order estimate of livelihoods exposed, which is not the same as jobs lost.

The framework

For each value chain, livelihoods at risk = L × s × d, where L is the number of livelihoods in the chain from farm to port (farmers; hired harvest labour; aggregators and collection-centre staff; transporters; packhouse graders and processors; quality, phytosanitary and documentation staff; forwarders and clearing agents), s is the share of the chain's output sold through the disrupted corridor (the Gulf for Hormuz; Europe and Egypt for the Red Sea), and d is a duration factor from 0 to 1 for the share of the season affected. The table applies s only, so d = 1, which is the full-season, worst-case reading; a three-month disruption in a twelve-month chain would scale the figures by roughly a quarter. L comes from sector bodies, s from export statistics, and the national frame from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics: 354,500 formal wage jobs in agriculture in 2025, roughly 10.7 million people working in agriculture in total on the ILO modelled share of 46%, 84% of all employment informal, and about 60% of young people engaged in agricultural value chains^{101,102,103,104}.

Scroll sideways to see the full table.

The table applies s only, so d = 1, which is the full-season, worst-case reading; a three-month disruption in a twelve-month chain would scale the figures by roughly a quarter.

A ceiling, not a count. Applying export destination shares to sector employment puts between 175,000 and 300,000 export-linked livelihoods in Kenya's four most exposed chains in the path of the 2026 closure. Download this table (CSV).

Reading the table

Taken at face value, somewhere between 175,000 and 300,000 export-linked livelihoods in Kenya's four most exposed chains sat directly in the path of the 2026 closure, before counting the people who supply them. This is a ceiling rather than a count. It assumes the whole season is lost, it counts a farmer who sells a quarter of her crop to the Gulf as a quarter of a livelihood, and it does not net off the rerouting that has already happened. It also understates the people most exposed, because the wage jobs at the packhouse, in the cold store, on the harvest crew and at the clearing agent are the first to go when a container is not packed, and those jobs are held mainly by young people. The dataset that would turn this estimate into a measurement is a KNBS labour-force module on horticulture and livestock export chains by age and task. It does not yet exist.

How one smallholder exporter is navigating it

FarmMoja is a Kenyan avocado company built over ten years from the seedling up: a certified Hass nursery in Kericho, a partner-grower network of more than 3,000 smallholder farms across the western Rift Valley, a 100-plus-acre commercial orchard in Narok, and an export operations unit shipping to destinations across Europe and the Middle East. The company works with partners including the UK-funded CASA programme, the Mastercard Foundation's Africa Works programme, and the Kühne Climate Center with Wageningen University, whose 2025 postharvest assessment of Kenya's avocado chain cited the model as a notable first-mile intervention¹¹⁰. The 2026 season is being run inside everything described above. The six measures below are what has worked for us; they are set out as options for other exporters in the same position, and for the funders and researchers who work with them.

There are limits to what a single exporter can do. It cannot reopen Hormuz, insure its way around a 7.5% war-risk premium, or wait 40 days for Rotterdam. It can choose the market whose chokepoint is least broken this month, hold quality to the standard the longer transit demands, and structure its capital so that a season survives the strait.

Counterpoints: what the wars did not cause

What it means for young people and for policy

Three conclusions follow for anyone designing youth programmes in food systems.

First, resilience is the ability to switch, not the possession of one alternative. Kenya's Gulf route was the alternative to Europe, and it broke first. The exporters who have survived 2026 are the ones who could move fruit to Khor Fakkan instead of Jebel Ali, flowers through Istanbul instead of Doha, and avocados to Shanghai instead of Rotterdam within weeks. Every one of those switches is executed by someone with a skill: maturity testing, grading, cold-chain management, documentation, booking management, buyer communication. Those skills are portable across Kenya's entire horticultural sector, and they are the content of a youth employment programme that would survive the next strait closing.

Kenya's Gulf route was the alternative to Europe, and it broke first.

Second, the binding constraint is capital, and the capital gap is an insurance gap. No amount of agronomy fills a working-capital hole created by an uninsurable voyage. Donors and foundations that want smallholder export chains to survive shocks should fund the risk the market will no longer price, through first-loss and mezzanine structures that crowd commercial lenders in, rather than funding operations the market would finance on its own. The instruments exist and the leverage is documented.

Third, the numbers that matter are not yet collected. Kenya reports its tea exports to Iran to the kilogram, but has no count of how many young people grade avocados for export, or what happened to them in March. A labour-force module on export horticulture and livestock by task and age would turn the exposure estimate above into a measurement, and would let the next shock be planned for rather than described afterwards. This is work a national statistics office can do, and it is the kind of study a university and an exporter can run together.

Method, caveats and authorship

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