The timing couldn’t be worse for a continent just beginning to recover from two recent global shocks.
Africa is again staring down the barrel of an external shock. The Middle East crisis marks the third major supply disruption in less than a decade, following COVID-19 and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict. In each case, an external trigger exposes structural vulnerabilities, and economies plunge into distress.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Many African economies have spent the past two years rebuilding buffers badly eroded during the 2022 shock. Continent-wide, fiscal consolidation has…