Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
· collected 2026-08-16 · by Rafael Shikhani
As the disruption of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz continues, African economies have taken a heavy hit.
asserted
economies → continue → hit
This is despite the fact that they possess vast energy and other resources.
asserted
they → possess → energy
Four years ago, the Russia-Ukraine war had a similar impact.
asserted
war → have → impact
As we enter what I call the post-Hormuz era – a time in which the global system is no longer defined by a single chokepoint – Africa has the unique opportunity to reverse its fortunes and emerge from the periphery of world geopolitics.
asserted
Africa → enter → geopolitics
Instead of being a passive supplier of resources and a recipient of strategic decisions taken in other geographies, it can create its own geopolitical context.
asserted
it → take → context
What African states fear
The first step in Africa’s transformation is a collective push to overcome what I have termed thalassophobia: a historical tendency among African states to regard the sea above all as a physical boundary rather than as a space of economic, political and military projection.
asserted
I → fear → projection
For decades, the African strategic imaginary was shaped above all by terrestrial threats — wars of national liberation, civil wars, insurgencies, coups d’etat and border conflicts.
asserted
imaginary → shape → liberation
The sea remained peripheral not only in public policy but also in the strategic culture of the elites.
asserted
sea → remain → elites
This legacy helps to explain why Africa produced abundant reflection on land security but far less on maritime power, the blue economy, oceanic corridors and naval projection.
asserted
Africa → help → power
The other problem is that African states are often afraid of collectively assuming the political, financial and institutional costs of a common continental strategy, preferring fragmented national responses to an integrated vision of the African space.
asserted
states → assume → space
African states inherited colonial borders and made territorial inviolability the founding principle of the post-independence order — enshrined in the foundations of the Organisation of African Unity established in 1963 and its successor, the African Union.
asserted
inviolability → inherit → 1963
Yet a common maritime strategy requires the sharing of sovereign prerogatives: jurisdiction over exclusive economic zones, rules of engagement, joint commands, the surrender of sensitive intelligence.
asserted
strategy → require → intelligence
Africa has not one but several maritime frontages where threats differ: piracy and crude oil theft in the Gulf of Guinea, illegal fishing and trafficking in the Western Indian Ocean and migratory flows in the Mediterranean.
asserted
threats → have → Mediterranean
Forging a single agenda out of such divergent priorities is an arduous task, and fragmentation emerges as the path of least resistance.
asserted
fragmentation → forge → resistance
Building maritime capabilities — naval, coastguard, surveillance, intelligence and logistical — is extraordinarily expensive, and few states can sustain them.
asserted
states → build → them
Because maritime security is a collective good, the classic problem of collective action sets in: each state has an incentive to wait for the others to bear the burden.
asserted
others → set → burden
The permanent presence of foreign navies in African waters — under international missions, military bases or bilateral agreements — supplies maritime security.
asserted
presence → supply → security
This functional dependence discourages the building of endogenous capacity.
asserted
dependence → discourage → capacity
The fifth reason is that elites derive greater benefit from bilateral relations with external powers than from regional integration, so that political and financial rent flows from the outside in, rather than from within.
asserted
rent → derive → within
Finally, insurrections, border disputes, internal security, etc absorb budgets and attention, relegating the sea to a priority forever postponed.
asserted
insurrections → absorb → priority
Why Africa needs geopolitical consciousness
In Africa, the sea remains politically invisible: it acquires centrality only when an international crisis reminds African states of their dependence on the global maritime corridors.
asserted
crisis → need → corridors
As a result, Africa’s vast strategic resources — oil, natural gas, minerals critical to the energy transition and a geographical position linking the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean — do not translate into geopolitical autonomy.
asserted
resources → link → autonomy
To get out of this decades-old conundrum, Africa must construct its own geopolitical context.
asserted
Africa → get → context
This means defining continental priorities in the fields of maritime security, infrastructure, energy, value chains, industrial integration, foreign policy and, above all, strategic autonomy.
asserted
This → mean → all
It is precisely here that the concept of the “post-Hormuz era” acquires density.
asserted
concept → acquire → density
This denotes the passage from a geopolitical system dominated by a single energy chokepoint to a polycentric system, in which the world’s economic security comes to be determined by the articulation of several strategic corridors: Hormuz itself and Bab al-Mandeb, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Mozambique Channel, the Cape of Good Hope, the Western Indian Ocean and, eventually, even the Arctic — a network of interdependent corridors in which Africa occupies a central position.
asserted
Africa → denote → position
In this context, Africa ceases to be merely a region traversed by global flows and comes to form part of a system of maritime corridors decisive for the world economy.
asserted
Africa → cease → economy
The continent does not lack maritime strategies on paper: the African Union adopted, in 2014, the 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy and, in 2016, the African Charter on Maritime Security and Safety.
asserted
Union → lack → Security
Yet the former remains largely unimplemented, and the latter still awaits the number of ratifications required for its entry into force.
asserted
latter → remain → force
What Africa needs is the geopolitical consciousness to translate these documents into practice.
asserted
needs → need → practice
The distance between the strategy proclaimed and the strategy lived is, precisely, the measure of strategic thalassophobia.
asserted
distance → proclaim → thalassophobia
What Africa needs to do
Building a geopolitical consciousness implies, first of all, changing the way African political elites perceive the sea.
asserted
elites → need → sea
As long as it continues to be understood chiefly as a frontier, an export route or a space for the intervention of external powers, the political will to invest in maritime capabilities of one’s own is unlikely to emerge.
asserted
will → continue → one
The first transformation is therefore intellectual: to recognise that the sea has ceased to be a periphery and has become one of the principal spaces for the affirmation of African power.
asserted
sea → recognise → power
This means inscribing maritime ambition into institutions, budgets and command structures.
asserted
This → mean → institutions
As for leadership, it would be illusory to expect it exclusively from the African Union as a continental bureaucracy.
asserted
it → expect → bureaucracy
The realistic impulse would come from a coalition of anchor states, endowed with maritime weight and political will — South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Angola and Senegal — acting through the regional economic communities and specialised mechanisms.
asserted
impulse → come → communities
The precedent exists, and it is African: the Yaounde Architecture, created by the states of the Gulf of Guinea, established coordination and information-sharing centres that helped to reduce piracy in the region.
asserted
that → exist → region
It is a functional, endogenous and replicable model — one that should be extended to the Western Indian Ocean and the Mozambique Channel.
asserted
that → extend → Ocean
In terms of concrete policies, six lines appear to be priorities.
asserted
lines → appear → policies
…and 8 more, not listed.
