Not Hormuz. When Iranian strikes hit Jebel Ali Port and Dubai Airport, his payment corridor froze. Letter of credit settlement stalled. Forex inflow gone. We granted a 45-day extension to keep the facility performing and avoid an outright NPL.

The numbers are not abstract. On 28 February the United States and Israel struck Iran, and Iran retaliated against Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait. Jebel Ali, handling 60 percent of Middle East re-exports and 14 million TEUs a year, caught fire. A data centre went offline and payments infrastructure was disrupted at the same time. Then Hormuz followed. Tanker traffic dropped 90 percent. Both Hormuz and the Red Sea closed simultaneously, for the first time in modern history: 20 million barrels a day, $500 billion in annual energy trade. Brent above $84, up 26 percent. Africa imports 85 percent of its wheat through these corridors. We are in the blast radius.

A direct call to every trade finance professional

Afreximbank disbursed $17.5 billion in 2024 and is targeting $40 billion by 2026. Africa is still 3.3 percent of global exports. This crisis will either widen that gap or close it.

  • Stress-test your facilities. Pre-export and commodity-backed structures built on standard transit assumptions are now mispriced. Freight is up 40 to 80 percent. Transit is extended by ten days or more. Remodel collateral values before your next credit committee, not after the next default.
  • Deploy counter-cyclical capital. Afreximbank did it in 2015 and during COVID. Emergency trade finance lines must activate now.
  • Price corridor risk into your structures. Hormuz, Suez and Dubai settlement risk belong inside your risk participation agreements and DFI syndications as live structural risk, not force majeure boilerplate.
  • Back value addition. Africa exports raw commodities on ships it does not own, through corridors it does not control. AfCFTA is the continent's most durable hedge.

Africa's agro-commodity exporters did not start this war. But the NPLs will land on African balance sheets regardless. We granted a 45-day extension and kept the facility performing. That was a judgement call under pressure, not a structured response to a known risk. Not every banker will have that option. What is your contingency?