The closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the conflict in Iran sharply pushed up fertiliser prices in Africa, exposing farmers’ vulnerability to imported inputs but also giving governments a chance to rethink subsidies and invest in farming systems less exposed to global price shocks.
The Strait carries around a third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser trade, and urea prices doubled to more than $850 (Sh110,117) a tonne by April. Prices have since eased, but the World Bank still expects fertiliser prices to average more than 30 percent higher across 2026, with relief only in 2027.
Science tells us a system is weak long before it breaks, but history shows it often takes a crisis for that lesson to sink in. This year, the lesson arrived painfully. African nations cannot afford more crises of this kind.
When prices rose, governments moved to protect farmers, largely through subsidies, even as aid budgets shrink. Farmers need that support, and mineral fertiliser remains essential at the scale Africa requires. But subsidies that rise with import prices protect farmers without changing what makes their farms vulnerable.
Where soils are degraded or acidified, much of the applied nitrogen is never taken up by crops. Farmers pay for the whole bag but harvest only a fraction of its value. The subsidy absorbs the price shock; the soil still loses the nutrient.
The more useful debate is therefore how to spend the same money on making farms less vulnerable in the first place.
Governments are paying far more for the same protection while the underlying vulnerability remains. The choice is no longer reform or the status quo. It is paying more each year for the same result or spending the same budget on what each farmer’s land actually needs.
Farmers keep their support; the money buys more.
First, reduce dependence on imports. Healthy soil holds nutrients where roots can reach them, while precision application raises the share of nitrogen crops absorb. We have seen this work in Ethiopia.
Crop choice matters too. Legumes fix nitrogen from the air and leave it for the crop that follows. Across sub-Saharan Africa, maize after a legume consistently outyields maize after maize, while millet, sorghum and pulses can thrive with little or no nitrogen fertiliser.
Second, redesign incentives. Public money shapes farming through what governments subsidise and what they buy. Subsidies work best when they follow the farmer rather than the product, widening what the same money can buy: soil amendments, lime and better seed. Zambia has already done this.
Public procurement is the other half. School meals, hospitals and public canteens create steady demand. Anchoring that demand to diverse local production can build markets for crops requiring fewer imported inputs while improving diets.
Third, build African supply capacity. Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has been exporting fuel and urea to Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Tanzania, Ghana, and Togo, helping soften disruption for neighbours.
Morocco supplies more than half of Africa’s phosphate, while gas reserves in Nigeria, Mozambique, Tanzania and Senegal could support more fertiliser production. Regional production, blending and trade can turn one supply route into several.
The stakes go beyond farm economics. In 2025, our scientists traced the road from a warming climate to conflict in Nigeria and found that it runs through the food system.
Heat reduces harvests, incomes fall, and children are the first to show it through rising wasting, the acute malnutrition that occurs when a child’s weight falls too low for their height. Where wasting rose, violence became more likely to follow. It emerged as an early warning signal for conflict before violence escalated.
This year’s price shock works the same way. When food costs rise, households buy cheaper and starchier food and diets narrow. Prices may recover, but a child can carry the developmental cost for life. Four of the 10 countries accounting for two-thirds of the world’s acute hunger are African. A working food system is therefore a foundation for stability.
Juan Lucas Restrepo is the Director General of Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which are part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. Its Africa hub is in Nairobi, with offices including Bukavu, Kigali and Addis Ababa.
