| INSTRUMENT | LEVEL | MOVE | NOTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $83.99 | ▲ +3.0% | Hormuz effective closure; Goldman $100–$120 scenario active |
| WTI Crude | $77.43 | ▲ elevated | African oil exporters (Angola, Nigeria) benefit; importers hurt |
| JSE / JSE All Share | Under pressure | ▼ | SARB rate-cut expectations collapse; war inflation fears |
| Gold (spot) | ~$2,910 | ▲ +$50 | Safe-haven bid; positive for South African miners (AngloGold, Gold Fields) |
| Copper | $5.84/lb | ▼ soft | Zambia and DRC exports; demand outlook clouded by global slowdown risk |
| Platinum | $2,180.70/oz | ▲ +1.2% | South Africa supplies ~70% of global platinum; geopolitical premium |
| Palladium | $1,709/oz | ▲ +0.8% | SA PGM producers benefit amid supply-chain repricing |
| Cocoa (futures) | $3,060/ton | ▲ +1.2% | Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire exports; recovering from recent lows |
| USD/ZAR | ~R15.99 | ▬ watch | Rand held relatively stable but SARB rate uncertainty creates downside risk |
The second Rubaya landslide in six weeks — again 200+ dead — is no longer an accident pattern. It is an indictment of M23 governance over one of Africa’s most strategically important mineral sites. Rubaya generates an estimated $800,000 per month for the rebel group’s insurgency while operating without the safety standards that even artisanal mines in less conflict-affected areas nominally maintain. The fact that Rubaya is now on a DRC-US minerals cooperation shortlist creates a direct political problem for Washington: the Trump administration cannot simultaneously negotiate a mineral partnership on assets controlled by rebels responsible for mass civilian casualties. Global Witness has documented children working at the site; now they are dying in landslides. European and American electronics buyers — whose supply chains run through Rwandan intermediaries — face intensifying due diligence exposure.
Zimbabwe’s lithium export ban Cabinet ratification is the continent’s most significant resource nationalism move since DRC imposed cobalt export curbs in early 2025. The difference, as Fitch BMI notes, is that Zimbabwe’s share of global lithium production is not high enough to trigger a DRC-cobalt style demand destruction downstream — but it is enough to tighten a market that was already repricing. BMI has revised 2026 lithium carbonate prices upward and cut Zimbabwe production forecasts by a meaningful margin. The real prize here is not the ban itself but whether Harare can attract the processing investment to make beneficiation viable. Mnangagwa’s government has promised tax breaks and public-private partnerships; sceptics note Zimbabwe’s history of policy inconsistency. The clock is ticking: Chinese majors with roughly $400 million in operational facilities and a further $500 million in planned processing investment in Zimbabwe’s lithium sector cannot run processing-less mines indefinitely.
South Africa’s March fuel price increase — petrol +20 cents, diesel +62–65 cents — arrived on the first Wednesday of the month with the precision of a standing commitment that now carries new strategic weight. The SARB’s March 26 meeting has moved from near-certain cut to live uncertainty in the space of five days of US-Iran conflict. KPMG’s Blackmore is right to flag “far-reaching implications”: every rand of additional fuel cost reaches transport, food production, logistics and household budgets in a country where 41.1% are unemployed and most households have no financial buffer. The real risk is a policy trap: if the SARB holds or hikes, growth stalls further; if it cuts into rising inflation, the rand weakens, worsening the import price spiral. South Africa did not start this fire.
The WFP resumption of regular Khartoum flights is a humanitarian milestone — but read carefully what it reveals about the underlying political architecture. Aviation expert Ibrahim Adlan confirmed that the flights could only proceed via prior arrangements with both belligerents: the SAF and RSF reached undisclosed understandings to neutralise the airport for humanitarian purposes. That is not peace. It is a managed, fragile, and revocable operational understanding. Khartoum airport remains vulnerable to the same drone strikes that hit it on the eve of its October reopening. Sudan still hosts the world’s largest displacement crisis, and the RSF continues to fight in Kordofan and Darfur. The WFP plane landing at Khartoum is the beginning of logistics normalisation, not conflict resolution.
Tinubu’s four-day reversal of the FAAN airport cashless policy illustrates a persistent implementation gap in Nigerian policy reform: good objectives, rushed rollout, political pain, suspension. FAAN’s goal — eliminating 50 years of cash revenue leakage at toll gates — is sound. But deploying a mandatory contactless system at Lagos International, one of Africa’s busiest airports, with zero lead-time for unbanked or card-light travellers, was operationally naive. Aviation security analyst John Ojikutu’s critique is apt: you cannot charge passengers a Passenger Service Charge and then toll them again at the gate. The hybrid temporary system buys time, but the fundamental challenge remains — Nigeria’s digital payment penetration is not yet at a level where mandatory cashless works at infrastructure chokepoints without painful transition periods.
More than 200 people — including approximately 70 children — died Tuesday when a landslide struck the Luwowo coltan mine in the Rubaya complex, North Kivu. DRC Ministry of Mines confirmed the toll on Wednesday; M23 rebel official Fanny Kaj disputed it, claiming “bombings” killed only five. A miner at the site, Ibrahim Taluseke, said he personally helped recover over 200 bodies. The site, controlled by the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 since 2024, generates roughly $800,000 per month for the rebel group and produces around 15% of global coltan — an essential component in tantalum used in smartphones, laptops, aerospace components, and gas turbines. The Rubaya site was recently added to a shortlist of DRC assets under a minerals cooperation framework being negotiated with the United States.
This is the second major collapse at Rubaya this calendar year, following a January landslide that also killed 200+. The pattern — four deadly landslides in 18 months, as documented by Global Witness — makes any US minerals partnership involving these sites a political liability. Congress and the EU’s supply chain due diligence regime (CSDDD) will face immediate pressure. Tantalum supply chain traceability is a live regulatory issue in both Brussels and Washington.
Zimbabwe’s Cabinet on Wednesday formally ratified the immediate ban on all raw mineral and lithium concentrate exports, originally announced on February 25. Mines Minister Polite Kambamura cited mining companies’ “unprecedented scramble” to export before the planned 2027 deadline, widespread under-declaration of volumes, and reports of illicit stockpiling across borders. Zimbabwe is Africa‘s largest lithium producer — 1.128 million metric tonnes of spodumene concentrate exported in 2025, mostly to China, generating $571.6 million in government revenue. Chinese majors Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine, Chengxin Lithium and Yahua face immediate disruption. Fitch BMI cut 2026 Zimbabwe production forecasts to 131,100 tonnes LCE and raised lithium price forecasts.
The Indonesia nickel ban precedent (2020) is instructive: it required a painful 24–30 month revenue gap before local processing capacity came online. Zimbabwe’s first processing facility — Huayou’s Arcadia plant — can only handle that company’s own mine output, leaving other producers with no domestic processing option. Miners face a binary choice: curtail production or sit on unshippable concentrate. The government’s ability to attract the additional refinery investment needed will determine whether this is transformative industrial policy or a revenue shock.
Fuel price adjustments took effect Wednesday: petrol 93/95 up 20 cents/litre; diesel (0.05% sulphur) up 62 cents/litre; diesel (0.005%) up 65 cents/litre; illuminating paraffin up 44 cents/litre. Minister Gwede Mantashe cited rising Brent crude (from $64.08 to $69.08 during the review period) and US-Iran Hormuz disruption. Additional April increases are already signalled — the 2026 Budget raised the General Fuel Levy by 9 cents/litre and the Road Accident Fund levy, adding approximately 7 more cents from April. KPMG economist Frank Blackmore said market reactions to oil’s surge have “far-reaching implications” for the SARB’s easing path.
Market pricing has shifted sharply: the SARB’s March 26 MPC meeting — previously seen as near-certain to cut — now carries a meaningful probability of a hold or hike. The South African Public Investment Corporation’s R120 billion Isibaya portfolio is already under stress; a rate-hold environment compounds pressure on distressed assets. South Africa’s 41.1% unemployment rate means consumer fuel price shocks cascade immediately into food prices, transport costs, and household debt serviceability.
The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by WFP, resumed regular weekly flights to Khartoum as of late February — the first UN humanitarian air access in nearly three years. UN Humanitarian Coordinator Denise Brown flew onwards to South Kordofan, accessing Kadugli and Dilling — cities besieged for months — for the first time. More than 50 trucks of essential supplies were delivered. Aviation expert Ibrahim Adlan confirmed the operation required undisclosed security arrangements between the SAF and RSF, effectively neutralising Khartoum airport as a military target during humanitarian operations. WFP spokesman Felipe Korf confirmed weekly flights will continue.
The flight resumption signals that US envoy Massad Boulos’s Quartet initiative (US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE) has achieved an operational, if undeclared, humanitarian truce in the capital. It does not signal broader peace: RSF continues to fight in Kordofan; Sudan still has 11 million displaced and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The fragility of these arrangements — the airport was drone-struck on the eve of its October reopening — means every weekly flight is contingent on continued belligerent restraint.
President Tinubu directed immediate suspension of FAAN’s “Operation Go Cashless” — introduced March 1 — following nationwide airport gridlock. The policy required mandatory electronic payments at all toll gates, parking and VIP lounges across Nigerian airports, replacing 50 years of cash collection aimed at eliminating revenue leakage and fraud. However, severe congestion at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed and Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe airports caused passengers to miss flights for days. Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo announced the suspension after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting, confirming a temporary hybrid cash-plus-card system while the framework is redesigned, potentially with private sector involvement. FEC also approved the re-scoping of the Abuja Second Runway project.
This is a governance sequencing failure, not a policy failure: FAAN’s cashless ambition is justified — airports elsewhere in Africa (Nairobi, Kigali) have successfully implemented digital toll systems. The error was deploying mandatory-only digital payments at Africa’s busiest airport without adequate card distribution, public education, or backup systems. The Abuja Second Runway approval is the more consequential aviation development long-term: capacity constraints at Nnamdi Azikiwe remain a bottleneck for Nigeria’s aspiration to become the continent’s primary aviation hub.
African diplomats and policy experts at a forum in Addis Ababa Thursday renewed urgent calls for UNSC reform, with Ghana’s Ambassador to Ethiopia Robert Afriyie noting that 60 years have passed since the last UNSC structural reform despite Africa accounting for roughly 60% of the Council’s peace and security workload. Japan’s Ambassador to the AU backed reform. The African position under the Ezulwini Consensus demands two permanent seats with full veto rights — or veto abolition for all. The US offer of two permanent seats without veto is being characterised by African analysts as “second-class” permanent membership.
The Iran war is doing more to accelerate UNSC reform rhetoric than a decade of diplomacy: 10+ African states formally called for restraint in a conflict decided entirely by non-African powers, over a waterway that determines their fuel costs, food prices, and remittance flows. The lesson Africa is drawing — that global governance excludes the continent at its own expense — is likely to drive a new intensity of AU coordination on the UNSC candidacy question. The internal AU competition between South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya for the potential seats remains unresolved.
| COUNTRY / INSTRUMENT | DIRECTION | KEY DRIVER |
|---|---|---|
| South Africa — SARB / Sovereign | ▼ uncertain | March 26 MPC meeting repriced from near-certain cut to uncertain; fuel-driven inflation + war risk complicating easing path; PIC Isibaya portfolio under stress; repo rate currently 6.75% |
| Nigeria — Naira / Fiscal | ▲ oil windfall | As a net oil exporter, Nigeria benefits from Brent at $83.99; FAAN cashless reversal is a domestic political cost, not a fiscal one; subsidy reform path continues |
| Zimbabwe — ZWL / Sovereign | ▬ transitional | Lithium export ban will suppress FX earnings in the near term ($571.6M annual revenue at risk); depends on speed of processing investment; platinum and gold exports partially offsetting |
| DRC — Sovereign / Minerals | ▼ | Rubaya disaster creates liability cloud over DRC-US minerals framework; M23 political economy complicates any deal; conflict premium on eastern DRC assets rising |
| East/Sahel African Sovereigns | ▼ pressure | Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Niger, Chad — net importers facing Hormuz-driven fuel inflation; IMF programme deficit ceilings at risk if subsidy pressures resurface; remittance corridor disruption adds FX pressure |
| NAME | ROLE | WHY THEY MATTER TODAY |
|---|---|---|
| Polite Kambamura | Zimbabwe Mines Minister | Confirmed Cabinet ratification of the total raw mineral and lithium export ban; cited under-declaration of volumes and a pre-deadline scramble; now responsible for delivering the processing investment framework that makes the ban viable |
| Fanny Kaj | M23/AFC Senior Official, DRC | Disputed DRC government’s 200+ death toll at Rubaya mine, claiming “bombings” killed only five — a claim contradicted by miners at the site; key figure in political economy of eastern DRC’s conflict minerals |
| Denise Brown | UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Sudan | Took the first UN humanitarian flight to Khartoum in three years; flew onwards to South Kordofan; her successful access to Kadugli and Dilling signals the fragile but real opening of aid corridors to previously besieged areas |
| Bola Tinubu | President of Nigeria | Reversed FAAN’s cashless airport policy four days after implementation amid gridlock chaos; signal of political responsiveness to consumer pressure, but also of implementation governance gaps in reform rollout; FEC also approved Abuja Second Runway re-scoping |
| Robert Afriyie | Ghana’s Ambassador to Ethiopia | Leading African voice at Thursday’s UNSC reform forum in Addis Ababa; articulated the 60-year structural injustice of Africa bearing ~60% of the Council’s workload with zero permanent seats; the Iran war is giving his argument new urgency |
| JURISDICTION | ACTION | IMPACT |
|---|---|---|
| Zimbabwe | Cabinet formally ratifies immediate indefinite ban on all raw mineral and lithium concentrate exports | Chinese lithium majors (Huayou, Sinomine, Chengxin, Yahua) face production halt unless they can access domestic processing; Fitch BMI cuts 2026 production forecast to 131,100 tonnes LCE; prices tighten in global lithium market |
| South Africa | Fuel price adjustments take effect (Wed); SARB MPC March 26 rate decision under live uncertainty | Petrol +20c, diesel +62–65c, paraffin +44c per litre; April levy increases add another ~16–20c; SARB may be forced to hold or hike into a weak-growth economy to defend against imported inflation |
| Nigeria | President Tinubu suspends FAAN “Operation Go Cashless” at all airports; hybrid cash-plus-card system reinstated; Abuja Second Runway re-scoping approved by FEC | Short-term relief for air travellers; FAAN directed to redesign electronic framework with possible private operator involvement; second runway expansion signals long-term aviation investment intent |
| DRC / International | EU CSDDD supply chain due diligence obligations bear on Rubaya coltan; DRC-US minerals framework faces human rights liability test | Companies sourcing coltan from North Kivu/Rwanda supply chains face mandatory due diligence requirements; second Rubaya disaster within 6 weeks will trigger regulatory scrutiny of M23-controlled tantalum in global electronics supply chains |
| DATE | EVENT | WATCH FOR |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 5 (today) | UNSC reform forum, Addis Ababa; ongoing DRC mine rescue operations; Nigeria hybrid airport system reinstated | AU consensus statement on UNSC candidacy; confirmed Rubaya death toll; FAAN cashless redesign timeline |
| Mar 6 (Fri) | US Non-Farm Payrolls release; Brent crude trajectory update; potential WFP second Khartoum flight | NFP for global demand signal; Brent trajectory determines Africa fuel inflation outlook for March-April; Sudan access sustainability |
| Mar 26 (Thu) | South African Reserve Bank MPC rate decision | Cut vs. hold vs. hike — the decision will define SARB credibility and household relief trajectory for 2026; watch for dissenting votes |
| Mar 26 (Thu) | Buy Zimbabwe Buy Local Conference — local processing investment discussion | Whether government can unlock credible lithium processing investment commitments to justify the export ban |
| Apr 2026 | South Africa additional fuel levy increases take effect (General Fuel Levy +9c, RAF, carbon levy) | Combined with March Hormuz-driven hike, April increase compounds consumer pressure; watch for Ramaphosa government political response |
| Ongoing | DRC-US minerals cooperation framework negotiations; Rubaya disaster political fallout | Whether Washington proceeds with a minerals deal that includes M23-controlled Rubaya assets after second mass-casualty landslide in six weeks |
Africa did not start any of today’s fires. Yet it is paying for all of them. The US-Iran war — decided in Washington and Tel Aviv, fought over a strait the continent does not control — is already landing as a fuel price shock in South Africa, a fiscal pressure in Kenya, a food cost crisis in the Sahel, and a remittance corridor disruption for the millions of Africans working across the Gulf states that are now under Iranian retaliatory attack. The “Hormuz Tax,” as CNBC Africa’s editorial board named it Thursday, is a structural cost African consumers pay whenever distant powers fight over energy chokepoints they have no voice in protecting.
In eastern DRC, that powerlessness takes its most lethal form. The second Rubaya coltan mine landslide of 2026 — again more than 200 dead, again approximately 70 of them children — is not a natural disaster. It is the consequence of an armed group running one of the world’s most critical mineral sites with no safety standards, no accountability, and no incentive for restraint because the global electronics supply chain keeps buying. Rubaya’s coltan moves through Rwandan intermediaries into European and American smartphones, laptops and aerospace components. That supply chain is now under both regulatory pressure — the EU’s CSDDD — and political pressure from the DRC-US minerals framework that included Rubaya on its shortlist. Washington cannot negotiate a minerals partnership on assets where children are dying in M23-managed mines.
Zimbabwe’s Cabinet ratification of the lithium export ban is the continent’s most consequential resource nationalism decision since DRC’s cobalt curbs in early 2025. The Fitch BMI analysis is measured and worth taking seriously: Zimbabwe’s share of global lithium is not large enough to cause the catastrophic demand destruction that the DRC cobalt ban threatened, but it is large enough to tighten a market already repricing. The real question is not whether the ban was justified — it clearly was, given the documented scramble to export before the deadline — but whether Harare can attract the $1 billion-plus in processing investment needed to make beneficiation viable. Mnangagwa’s government has made this promise before. Chinese capital at Huayou, Sinomine, Chengxin and Yahua is patient but not infinite.
In South Africa, the March fuel price increases arrived on schedule and with compounding force: Hormuz-driven crude, plus the government’s own April fuel levy hikes in the budget, create a two-stage price shock landing on an economy already operating at 41.1% unemployment and 1.6% growth. The SARB’s March 26 meeting — the most consequential monetary policy decision in South Africa since the post-pandemic normalisation cycle — has shifted from near-certain cut to live uncertainty. Governor Kganyago must choose between defending inflation credibility and providing growth support in the same week that South Africans are already paying war prices for diesel.
Against this backdrop, Sudan’s WFP Khartoum flight resumption is genuinely good news — a logistical opening that will matter enormously to 11 million displaced Sudanese. But read it accurately: it is not peace. It is a fragile, undisclosed operational arrangement between two belligerents who are still fighting each other in Kordofan and Darfur. The airport was drone-struck last October on the eve of its reopening. Denise Brown landing in Khartoum and reaching Kadugli is a humanitarian achievement; it is not a ceasefire.
And in Addis Ababa, African diplomats are meeting to demand what they have demanded for 60 years: a permanent voice in the Security Council. The Iran war has given that demand new moral weight. When the world’s most powerful decision-making body launched a war that determines Africa’s fuel costs, food prices, remittance flows, and airline routes — without a single African permanent member at the table — the case for reform wrote itself. Whether the US offer of two permanent seats without veto is acceptable is almost beside the point. Africa is telling the world that its exclusion from global governance is no longer an abstraction. It arrives every morning in fuel prices, in missed flights, and in landslides no one in power had any incentive to prevent.