the president, sacked his prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, a populist who refused to raise pump prices. Since Mr Sonko still wields control over a majority of mps, a high-stakes showdown looms. The effects of the Iran war may well catalyse yet more political crises. Malawi is chronically short of hard currency to import petrol, leading to shortages and a black-market price equivalent to about $20 per gallon. Madagascar, which has one of the highest food-import bills as a share of gdp in Africa, had a coup last year, and one putsch tends to shorten the odds of another. Mozambique had street protests last year over a dodgy election; the Iran war’s fallout today means that its people now have even more to demonstrate about. And that is just what is happening in some of the African countries beginning with M. But Africa is diverse: not all its 54 states are feeling the same shock. This is partly because of the changes of the 21st century, argues Ken Opalo, a Kenyan academic at Georgetown University. Finance ministers and central bankers no longer (mostly) try to print money when a crisis hits; they are nimble and prudent. Rising intra-African trade and large informal economies mean that countries have buffers against some of the shocks delivered by external forces. South Africa’s experience could prove typical. It began the year with high hopes, thanks to high commodity prices, global interest-rate cuts and growing evidence of structural reforms. Annualised first-quarter gdp growth was 2%, suggesting a recovery was under way. But recent surveys of business leaders suggest flagging confidence, in part due to the effects of the war. That does not mean a recession is coming, says Lisette IJssel de Schepper of the Bureau for Economic Research, a South African outfit. But “it suggests that the recovery has abruptly lost momentum.” Worryingly for policymakers, African recoveries are again proving short- lived. Last year the World Bank showed that economic expansions lasted, on average, 3.3 years in sub-Saharan Africa but 5.1 years in other developing countries and 7.2 in rich ones. No one knows how soon the effects of the war might ease, but it has probably made it harder to realise Africa’s potential. “Taken on its own, covid was worse,” says the Kenyan banker. “But taken as
the latest in a series, it is laid on top of a pretty weak platform. That’s the trouble.” ■ Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/18/the-iran-war-meant-an- economic-crisis-for-africa
Middle East & Africa | Jolly jollof, but not for everyone Is the staple meal in Nigeria and Ghana becoming a luxury? What the rising prices of jollof rice show about Nigeria and Ghana’s economies June 18th 2026 Nigerians and Ghanaians have a long, lively debate about whose jollof rice is better. (Senegalese thieboudienne, which gave birth to jollof, arguably trumps both.) A more pressing question is whose is cheaper? The Jollof index, issued quarterly by a Lagos-based consultancy called SBM Intelligence, tracks the prices of 12 ingredients used to make the staple in both countries, from the tinned tomato purée that gives the dish its renowned orange hue, to the oil used to sauté the onions and spices. In both countries ingredient prices have risen during the war over Iran. After the conflict began, in Nigeria, a pot of jollof for a family of five was soon
going for n30,435 ($22.4), a whopping 40% of the monthly minimum wage. This 20% jump since October came mostly from diesel costs for the lorries moving tomatoes and peppers from north to south. In Ghana, tomatoes now cost 56% more than before the war; the average price of rice is up by 29%. The cost of cooking gas has risen by 31%, adding to the cost. But the picture then diverges. In Ghana, where the government has steered a rocky return to single-digit inflation from a peak of 54% in December 2022, this average pot still works out in dollar terms cheaper than it was three years ago. Though its jollof basket depends more on imports, a stronger currency has cushioned families from the worst shocks. But in Nigeria that same pot is up by 50% in dollars terms over the same period. Though headline inflation has slowed over the past year, Nigeria’s bureau of statistics has just noted that prices are up by 16% on last year, the third monthly rise this year. Most jollof ingredients in Nigeria are farmed locally. But bad roads and weather always cause spikes at this time of year—worsened by the war. Nigeria’s higher rate of food insecurity means that even small, brief price rises can make the difference between someone eating their jollof rice with chicken—or settling for a morsel of smoked fish. For the 140m Nigerians under the poverty line, jollof has long been an unheard-of luxury.■
Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/18/is-the-staple-meal-in- nigeria-and-ghana-becoming-a-luxury
Britain’s departure made Europe more French The terrifying new air war in Ukraine Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party has won over the young Albania’s flamingo protests target Donald Trump’s son-in-law Europeans should learn to love the air-conditioner
Britain’s departure made Europe more French A smaller EU has learned to live without Britain June 18th 2026 At the time of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, many predicted that in the next decade the European Union would either fall apart or march briskly towards ever-closer union. Which one depended on who was talking. Right- wing populists, including those in Britain’s Leave campaign, forecast that the first country to leave the bloc would trigger a domino effect of others yearning to break free. Europhiles, for their part, spotted an opportunity: with the non-continental stick-in-the-mud gone, a more cohesive EU could be forged. Both sides agreed that English, the tongue of l’Albion perfide, would lose its grip over Brussels. As of 2026, neither scenario has panned out—though the federalist version is closer to the mark. No other country has come close to leaving the EU.
That is unsurprising, given how the years-long negotiations over the modalities of exiting the bloc upended British politics. Meanwhile, the union has deepened a bit. The absence of a big liberal brake on French statist schemes has nudged it towards more integration, at least in places. In many ways the EU has remained the same. English is even more of a lingua franca in Brussels than it was in 2016. Still, there are three big differences between today’s EU and that of a decade ago. The most notable evolution is fiscal. In July 2020, just six months after Britain formally departed, the EU’s remaining 27 members agreed on an €800bn ($928bn) covid recovery fund. Not only did this mark a large expansion of the bloc’s budget, which normally amounts to 1% or so of GDP. It was also the first instance of spending paid for through issuance by the EU of bonds in its own name, a federalising act of a sort Britain would surely have derailed had it been in on the negotiations. The second big change regards economic policymaking. Since Brexit the EU has taken a markedly dirigiste turn. Britain was among the bloc’s most ardent free-trading and liberal voices, the leader of a northern European group that balked at EU protectionism and overregulation. For decades it led the resistance to French-infused schemes that aimed to craft a European industrial policy. That term was long a taboo in Brussels. Now it is a core part of the EU’s goal of “strategic autonomy”—another French obsession. With
absent from decision-making summits, economic interventionism is rife these days. The EU has eased rules that prevented national governments from subsidising favoured industries. It has imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and sought to reduce unwanted dependence on imports, for example by pushing for “Made in Europe” clauses in public procurement. All of this is very un-British. Another marked evolution concerns defence. The British were among the members most sceptical of EU military efforts: as firm Atlanticists, they worried about undermining NATO. In 2024 the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, was restructured to add a defence commissioner (albeit one that looks after the defence industry, rather than more operational military matters). Still, the EU has increasingly weighed in on matters of war, for example by directly funding arms sent to Ukraine.
These three evolutions have something in common. All were caused by outside shocks, not by Brexit. The stimulus scheme was a result of the pandemic; economic interventionism is a response to the rise of Chinese exports; and NATO no longer feels like a reliable alliance, with Donald Trump in the White House and Russian revanchism on the march. “Brexit hasn’t caused the change the EU has gone through, but it affected the solutions that it arrived at to address those changes,” says Fabian Zuleeg of the European Policy Centre, a think-tank in Brussels. Some British priorities have survived their champion’s departure. For decades Britain pushed for EU enlargement, if only because a wider union probably meant a shallower one. Today the prospect of more countries acceding, including Ukraine, seems closer than for years. On some fronts the bloc is growing protectionist, but it is also signing trade deals, including with Mercosur, a group of countries including Brazil and Argentina. As members, the British were for that deal, the French (notably their farmers) against. The single market is also getting attention. This was another obsession of Britain, which often thought of the EU as a free-trade area with inconvenient bells and whistles attached. Had it stayed, it would be cheering on Brussels’s attempts to deepen the single market for services and reverse years of overregulation. In part these liberal priorities survive because Britain was never as isolated as it believed itself to be. Lots of countries shared its instincts: the Baltics and central Europeans on defence, the Scandinavians and Dutch on free trade, the Irish on Atlanticism. Northern Europeans have taken up the British baton when it comes to arguing for a smaller EU budget. Germany and the Netherlands are keen to ensure that the joint-borrowing scheme is a one-off. But without what was once the EU’s second-biggest member, that liberalising group is often fighting a rearguard action. Perhaps the biggest impact on Brexit was on EU morale. The bloc out- negotiated Britain at every turn of the four-year-long divorce. That gave it confidence to face later crises, whether covid or Ukraine. Yet the self- deprecating humour of Britain’s EU contingent remains sorely missed, even among their former ideological enemies. And English remains: the language