Reactions of African States to the Iran War
On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched coordinated air and missile strikes on targets in Iran. Tehran responded with missile and drone attacks in the Gulf region. As the military escalation in the Middle East expands, African states are also reacting. Immediately after the attacks began, the African Union (AU) called for restraint and emphasised the need for de-escalation, dialogue and respect for international law. The Commission’s Chairperson, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, warned that further escalation could have a significant impact on energy markets, price stability and food security in Africa. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also expressed concern that disruptions to global energy and trade chains could have particularly severe economic impacts on African states.
These concerns are primarily driven by risks to key maritime trade routes. Both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea, have been considered acute conflict zones since the beginning of the military escalation. Declining shipping traffic – much of it being rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope – along with rising insurance and transportation costs are already affecting global supply chains and increasing import costs for many African states.
Meanwhile, the responses of various African governments paint a nuanced picture. Similar to the AU Commission, representatives of the so-called A3 group (the African members of the UN Security Council), which currently includes the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Somalia, called for de-escalation and diplomatic solutions. Somalia additionally called for a nuclear-weapon-free region in the Middle East and, like Ethiopia and Kenya, primarily criticized the Iranian attacks on Gulf states. In an initial statement, however, Somalia explicitly excluded the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from its declaration of solidarity. Somalia accuses the UAE of having supported, behind the scenes, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Authorities in Somaliland, meanwhile, described the Iranian attacks as unprovoked aggression and expressed solidarity with all Gulf states.
Most governments in North Africa also condemned the Iranian attacks on ‘Arab brother states’, though their responses showed different nuances. Morocco – whose government severed diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime in 2018 due to alleged Iranian support for the Frente Polisario in Western Sahara – condemned the Iranian offensives as a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Gulf states. Neighboring Algeria, however, expressed deep concern about the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and warned against further military escalation. Egypt, meanwhile, has focused primarily on diplomatic mediation: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for dialogue between Washington and Tehran. Cairo is already feeling the economic effects of the war, as declining shipping traffic is reducing revenues from the Suez Canal, and Israel has suspended its gas deliveries due to the war – supplies that normally account for 15–20% of Egypt’s daily gas consumption.
At the same time, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko criticized the preceding U.S.–Israeli attacks on Iran as military actions carried out without a mandate from the United Nations. Both called for multilateral solutions. Ramaphosa also offered himself as a potential mediator should the parties to the conflict wish it. By comparison, countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Gambia adopted a more reserved stance but emphasized the importance of international law. A different tone was struck by Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, who expressed solidarity with Iran while subsequently condemning both the attacks on Iran and Iran’s attacks on Arab states.
The reactions of African governments nonetheless share one common feature: they avoid clearly siding with any of the three main belligerents. The differences largely reflect the geopolitical and economic entanglements of African states. Countries in the Horn of Africa maintain close relations with Gulf states, Israel, and the United States; Egypt and Morocco also have close ties to the United States. Countries such as South Africa and Senegal, by contrast, position themselves as defenders of the multilateral order. In many cases, the positions taken by governments are being debated controversially within their respective countries. The German Africa Foundation therefore plans to continue monitoring the African media landscape and to publish a special press review on African reactions to the Iran war.
Bilateral U.S. Health Partnerships in Africa
On Monday, international media reported that Niger and the United States had signed a bilateral health partnership under the America First Global Health Strategy. The agreement had already been concluded last Thursday, making Niger one of the latest signatories to this initiative. The partnership is part of a series of new bilateral health agreements between the United States and several partner countries, primarily in Africa.
Under the agreement, the US will provide up to $107 million to support health programmes in Niger, while the government of Niger will contribute $71 million from its own budget to strengthen the health system. The funds will be used to strengthen local health services, improve epidemic surveillance and expand malaria prevention and maternal and child health programmes. Niger is the second member of the Sahel Alliance (AES) to join the initiative. Early last week, Burkina Faso signed a similar five-year health partnership with up to $147 million in US funding.
The aim of the partnerships is to strengthen health systems and contain infectious diseases in order to enable a faster response to potential outbreaks. The US side also emphasises that direct bilateral cooperation could reduce administrative costs and allow funds to be channelled more quickly to local health services. The agreements are generally structured as five-year memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and are intended to cover the period from 2026 to 2030.
According to the US Government, 24 such bilateral health agreements had been signed under the strategy by the beginning of March, 20 of them with African countries, including Botswana, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The remaining four agreements were concluded with countries in Latin America. According to US figures, the health agreements concluded to date under the America First Global Health Strategy represent a total of around $20 billion in new health investments, including $12 billion from the US and around $7.5 billion in co-financing from partner countries.
However, other African countries are showing reluctance, particularly because of possible conditions regarding access to sensitive health data or strategic resources such as critical minerals. In Zimbabwe, talks on a possible $367 million agreement were ended last week after the government rejected conditions on the sharing of sensitive health data. Zambia also expressed reservations about parts of a proposed agreement worth around $1 billion. According to the government, the criticism relates in particular to clauses on data sharing and a controversial provision that would link health financing to a partnership in the mining sector.
Elsewhere, the agreements are causing problems with the judiciary. Kenya, for example, signed a $1.6 billion agreement back in December. However, the High Court has temporarily suspended its implementation until two pending lawsuits concerning possible data protection issues have been examined. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a lawsuit has been filed against an agreement on critical minerals that was concluded at short notice between Kinshasa and Washington at the beginning of December last year. A corresponding MoU was supposed to be signed on that date as part of the America First Global Health Strategy, but this did not happen until last week. Critics fear that the health agreement now agreed, worth up to $900 million from the US, could be linked to cooperation on raw materials. According to some analyses, developments in Guinea, which also entered into a raw materials cooperation agreement with the US at the beginning of February and is now one of the latest signatories to a health agreement, suggest a kind of exchange of strategic minerals for health cooperation.
International health organisations also responded with mixed reviews. The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) expressed concerns about data sharing and access to pathogens in some of the agreements. Critics warn that such arrangements could undermine national sovereignty, as they provide for the exchange of sensitive health and pathogen data that would give US companies a market advantage in the research and manufacture of vaccines, medicines and diagnostics, without necessarily guaranteeing equal access to these for African partner countries.
The initiative is part of a restructuring of US development policy, in which health programmes are increasingly organised through bilateral agreements. Many African partner countries previously received substantial US health funding through programmes such as PEPFAR or USAID and are now facing shortages of medicines and health services in some cases. While some countries see the new partnerships as an investment opportunity, others warn of risks to their sovereignty.
In other news
The Tour du Rwanda concluded on Sunday in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, with two German cyclists leading the pack. While Eritrean Henok Mulubrhan, the 2023 Tour winner, won the eighth and final stage, German Moritz Kretschy secured the overall victory. Although the 23-year-old did not win any of the eight stages, his total time of 23:08:48 over 997.8 kilometres earned him the overall win, finishing two minutes ahead of his compatriot Johannes Adamietz. Eritrean Amaniel Teweldemedhin Desta finished third overall. Kretschy had taken the yellow jersey after the fourth stage in Rubavu, in northwestern Rwanda, and defended it all the way to the finish in Kigali. He is the first German to win the Tour du Rwanda. Samuel Niyonkuru of Rwanda finished 16th, achieving the best result for a rider from the host country. According to the organisers, hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the streets along the route during the eight days of racing, which traversed various cities and regions of the country. Founded in 1988, the Tour du Rwanda is now part of the UCI Africa Tour and is considered one of the most important cycling events in Africa.