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By Cantona Joseph April 08, 2026 12:57 (EAT)

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African countries cannot avoid being harmed by the current Gulf war.

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By Easter 2026 it was still not clear when – or how – the war initiated by Israel and the US against Iran would end. But what was already clear was that it would harm Africa in a number of ways.

Firstly, it would adversely affect the global supply and prices of oil and gas, fertilisers and food. Secondly, local currencies would be affected. More than a month after the war had started a number of African currencies had begun to lose value against the US dollar.

Thirdly, interest rates stopped falling and further rate increases were highly likely. Fourth, there will be a decline in access to affordable foreign financing.

How should Africa respond?

African countries cannot avoid being harmed by the current Gulf war. Nevertheless, based on my work in international economic law and global economic governance, I think there are two lessons that, if followed, can help the continent emerge from the crisis in a better place.

First, governments and societies need to be pragmatic. Their first priority must be to do whatever they can to mitigate the impact of the war, particularly on their most vulnerable citizens. This will require governments to make trade-offs.

They will have to reallocate budgets to at least maintain the level of imports necessary to meet the society’s basic needs. They will need to convince their creditors to help finance their necessary imports. They will also need to persuade them to be flexible enough that they leave governments with at least some policy space.

Second, states and societies need to identify opportunities within the crisis for actions that over the medium term can help them meet their financing, economic, environmental and social challenges.

This requires collaboration between the state and its non-state stakeholders. Business, labour, religious groups, civil society organisations and international organisations all have something to contribute.

Action in the short run

The focus of Africa’s efforts in the short term must be on minimising the negative effects of the war and on managing the state’s external debts in the most sustainable and effective way.

This is easy to state, but hard to implement. This is particularly the case in the current international environment, in which it is not realistic to expect donor countries and other international sources of finance to be particularly generous.

African countries will need to convince their creditors to acknowledge that this crisis is beyond Africa’s control and that they should not compound the pain that’s being experienced. This will require, at a minimum, that the creditors agree to suspend debt payments for the next year.

Creditors have already accepted the principle that debt payments can be suspended when debt challenges arise from sources beyond the debtor’s control. Many of them have accepted clauses requiring such action under specific conditions in their most recent debt contracts. They also did this during COVID.

Second, African countries, which are already heavily indebted, should challenge their multilateral creditors to accept the consequences of being among the biggest creditors for the continent. This includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

By custom these institutions are treated as preferred creditors. This means that they get paid before all other creditors. Instead of participating in any debt restructurings, they also make new loans to the debtor in crisis. This shifts the debt restructuring burden onto the debtor’s other creditors. It also increases the total amount owed to the multilaterals.

This cannot continue. These institutions need to be more creative in providing Africa to financing. This should include:

• Using their financial resources to guarantee the financial transactions of African countries so that they can reduce their borrowing costs and attract new equity investments.
• More generously supporting innovative debt for development swaps. These involve creditors agreeing with African sovereign debtors to convert a portion of the existing debts into financing for specific local projects, for example in health or education.
• Helping African governments convert their foreign exchange denominated debts into local currency debts at affordable interest rates.

Third, governments should work with the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions to use these institutions more effectively to finance African development. For example:

• They should require the institutions to only undertake transactions that are consistent with their development mandates. This means no more opaque transactions like the recent one that the African Finance Corporation concluded with Senegal.
• African governments should take the necessary action to activate the African Financial Stability Mechanism that they agreed to establish last year. This would create a useful financial safety net for the continent.

Fourth, African governments must build on the efforts they began last year to become a more effective advocate for African development financing interests at the international level.

Among these efforts was the initiative by African ministers of finance to develop common African positions on sovereign debt restructurings. Another was South Africa’s launch of the African Expert Panel that proposed a number of initiatives on African debt and development financing.

In the medium term

African countries should advocate for the IMF to review its governance arrangements so that it becomes more accountable and responsive to developing countries, including African states and societies.

They should also advocate for the IMF to more use its existing resources, including its gold reserves, more creatively to support Africa.

Second, Africa should call for a debate on the preferred creditor status of multilateral financial institutions. This has become particularly relevant because the members of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions are claiming that, like all other multilateral financial institutions, they are entitled to this status.

It is not clear that there are good arguments for excluding these institutions from preferred creditor status while protecting the position of the legacy institutions. This suggests that there is a need for some general principles that help determine which institutions should be treated as preferred creditors.

These should be acceptable to all multilateral financial institutions and other market participants.

Third, African societies must make every effort to demonstrate that they are taking control of their own development. They should demand that their governments and all other actors in African development finance behave responsibly in regard to the financial, economic, environmental and social aspects of these transactions.

Another medium term objective should be to limit the illicit financial flows that are so often associated with international trade and investment. This goal would be advanced by the successful conclusion of the current efforts to agree on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

Danny Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Israel strikes southern Lebanon after US-Iran ceasefire

Air strikes hit the Tyre and Nabatieh areas in the south of the country,

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The Israeli military has carried out a wave of air strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, an indication that, for Israel, the US-Iran ceasefire deal does not apply to Lebanon – where it is fighting the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Air strikes hit the Tyre and Nabatieh areas in the south of the country, among others, hours after the agreement was announced.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has denied the assertion by Pakistan, which helped mediate, that the deal also covers the devastating conflict happening here.

Across Lebanon, more than 1,500 people have been killed, including 130 children.

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced – one in five of the population – most of them from Shia Muslim communities in the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, areas where Hezbollah holds sway.

Villages near the border have been destroyed, as invading Israeli troops aim to create what the Israeli authorities call a security buffer zone, to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and push its fighters away. This has raised concerns that some areas may be occupied even after the end of the war, and that many residents may never be able to return.

There has been no immediate reaction from either the Lebanese government or Hezbollah after the announcement of a ceasefire in the war between the US and Israel against Iran, which had started in late February.

In Lebanon, the latest escalation in the decades-long conflict between Hezbollah and Israel erupted when the group fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the opening stages of the war, and in response to near-daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire in the country that had been agreed on November 2024.

Israeli officials had indicated their intention to continue with their campaign in Lebanon even if there was a deal with Iran. But in recent days military sources quoted by Israeli media suggested the army had no intention to advance further in their invasion, and acknowledged that they would not be able to disarm Hezbollah by force.

Observers have expressed surprise with Hezbollah’s military capabilities in this conflict, as it was widely believed the group had been severely weakened in the last war that ended in November 2024. The group has frequently launched rockets and drones into northern Israel but confronted Israeli troops on the ground in southern Lebanon.

In Lebanon, however, Hezbollah has faced strong criticism as many blame it for dragging the country into an unwanted war and of defending the interests of its Iranian patron. But the group still enjoys significant support among Lebanese Shia.

The displacement crisis triggered by the war has put further pressure on the crisis-hit country. Schools that have been turned into shelters are full, and many are sleeping in improvised tents in public spaces and even in cars. The arrival of families to other communities has led to a rise in sectarian tensions, with people fearing that they too could become the target of Israeli attacks.

After the ceasefire deal in 2024, the Lebanese government announced a plan to disarm Hezbollah, which was created in the 1980s in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the 15-year Lebanese civil war. But, so far, the group has refused to discuss the future of its weapons.

President Joseph Aoun, a former army chief, had ruled out using force, warning that this could exacerbate divisions and lead to violence. Reacting to the latest escalation, his government made the historic announcement that it was open to negotiate directly with Israel – the countries do not have diplomatic relations. But, Israel, so far, has ignored the offer.

French couple leave Iran after more than three years in jail

Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are on their way home after being allowed to leave the country, the French president says.

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A French couple who spent more than three years in an Iranian prison on espionage charges are on their way home, French President Emmanuel Macron says.

Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, were arrested during a tourist trip in May 2022 on spying charges that France said were baseless, and held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

They were freed in November and had been under house arrest at the French embassy in the Iranian capital, Tehran, ever since.

“This is a relief for all of us and obviously for their families,” Macron posted on X on Tuesday. He also thanked Oman “for their mediation efforts”.

A French foreign ministry source told the AFP news agency that the couple left Iran at dawn Tuesday in a diplomatic convoy with the French ambassador and had travelled to neighbouring Azerbaijan.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, has not given details of couple’s movements but said they were “free at last” and that he had spoken to them by phone.

“They told me of their emotion and joy at soon being reunited with their country and their loved ones,” he wrote on X.

Paris’s daughter, Anne-Laure Paris, told AFP: “We are waiting for their return to France so we can give them a big hug.”

In October, an Iranian court sentenced Paris to 17 years and Kohler 20 years for allegedly spying for France and Israel.

They were released after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal to exchange French detainees for an Iranian woman, Mahdieh Esfandiari, was nearly complete.

Iran said at the time that Kohler and Paris could be released as part of that agreement, but the French government did not confirm the existence of such an arrangement.

Esfandiari was convicted in February for glorifying terrorism in social media posts. The Iranian authorities repeatedly said had been held unjustly since her arrest in France in February 2025.

Esfandiari’s lawyer told AFP on Tuesday that her client’s house arrest in France had ended as a result of Kohler and Paris being allowed to leave Iran.

The Iranian state news agency IRNA reported that the release of Kohler and Paris was part of an agreement between France and Iran, which also included the full release of Esfandiari.

The French government has not commented on what was agreed but Barrot spoke of the “long-term work” that foreign ministry teams carried out to “achieve this result”.

“We are grateful to our ambassador and staff in Tehran who, under extremely difficult conditions, ensured the safety of our citizens and their safe departure from Iran,” he added.

The release of the French detainees comes during the ongoing war in the Middle East, which began in late February when the US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran.

Tehran has responded by launching attacks on Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf. The fighting escalated quickly, spreading to Lebanon, with casualties and damage mounting on all sides.

France and other European countries have supported some US operations in the region, but have so far resisted getting dragged into the conflict.

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