Lead image for Africa must look beyond fertiliser price subsidies.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the conflict in Iran sharply pushed up fertiliser prices in Africa, exposing farmers’ vulnerability to imported inputs but also giving governments a chance to rethink subsidies and invest in farming systems less exposed to global price shocks.
The Strait carries around a third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser trade, and urea prices doubled to more than $850 (Sh110,117) a tonne by April. Prices have since eased, but the World Bank still expects fertiliser prices to average more than 30 percent higher across 2026, with relief only in 2027.
Science tells us a system is weak long before it breaks, but history shows it often takes a crisis for that lesson to sink in. This year, the lesson arrived painfully. African nations cannot afford more crises of this kind.
When prices rose, governments moved to protect farmers, largely through subsidies, even as aid budgets shrink. Farmers need that support, and mineral fertiliser remains essential at the scale Africa requires. But subsidies that rise with import prices protect farmers without changing what makes their farms vulnerable.
Where soils are degraded or acidified, much of the applied nitrogen is never taken up by crops. Farmers pay for the whole bag but harvest only a fraction of its value. The subsidy absorbs the price shock; the soil still loses the nutrient.
The more useful debate is therefore how to spend the same money on making farms less vulnerable in the first place.
Governments are paying far more for the same protection while the underlying vulnerability remains. The choice is no longer reform or the status quo. It is paying more each year for the same result or spending the same budget on what each farmer’s land actually needs.
Farmers keep their support; the money buys more.