Could the Iranian-American-Israeli shock evolve into a migration wave that redraws the demographic map from Africa to Europe and Asia?
by – Ramy Zohdy
Not all wars are measured by the number of missiles launched, the number of sites struck, or even the volume of statements exchanged between tense capitals.
Some wars outgrow their immediate geography and turn into prolonged economic and political earthquakes, hitting regions that were never party to the confrontation, yet forcing them to pay the full price in food security, monetary stability, public budgets, employment opportunities, and, consequently, their social and political stability.
From this precise angle, the question of how any Iranian-American-Israeli war would affect the African continent becomes far greater than a temporary spike in energy prices or marine insurance costs. At its core, it concerns the possibility of Africa entering a phase of compounded economic pressure that could push broad segments of its population, especially the youth, to seek individual and collective exits beyond the continent, whether through regular or irregular migration, thereby placing Europe first, and some Asian routes second, before mounting demographic, societal, and economic challenges.
This is not a case of rhetorical exaggeration, nor of political alarmism in search of quick media impact. It is, rather, a logical reading of an interconnected chain of consequences. When the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean become tense at the same moment, and when the Strait of Hormuz itself becomes a zone of threat or heightened anticipation, the world is no longer facing a merely localized security disturbance. It is facing a tangible possibility of rising oil and gas prices, higher shipping and insurance costs, disruptions in supply chains, and increases in the prices of food and fertilizers. These shocks, taken together, are then transmitted into fragile or semi-fragile economies, including a large number of African economies that are net importers of energy and food.
It is sufficient here to note that international assessments pointed to the continuation of shipping disruptions in the Red Sea throughout 2025, with cargo volumes transiting the Suez Canal remaining, until early May 2025, around 70 percent below the 2023 average. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz continued to account for roughly 11 percent of global maritime trade and more than one-third of seaborne oil exports, underscoring the extreme sensitivity of any escalation in that region.
It would be a mistake to look at Africa as a single bloc that would suffer in equal measure. The continent, as we know, includes oil-exporting states that may benefit financially in the short term from higher prices, such as Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, and Libya. Yet it also includes a larger number of states that would face a double squeeze: pressure from the import bill, pressure on public budgets, and a third squeeze on citizens’ purchasing power.
Even in oil-exporting states, the gains do not automatically trickle down to society, because many of these economies suffer from structural imbalances, high debt burdens, fragility in the distribution of returns, or weak social protection systems. This makes price gains in energy markets insufficient to offset the broader losses caused by rising transport and food costs and by disruptions to investment flows.
The World Bank estimated growth in Sub-Saharan Africa at around 4 percent in 2025, up from 3.5 percent in 2024, with relative improvement driven by lower inflation in some countries and higher prices for certain primary commodities. Yet it also pointed to clear disparities among states and the persistence of multiple vulnerabilities. This means that any major geopolitical shock could easily push this trajectory downward again, or at the very least strip it of its positive social effects.
In my assessment, the most dangerous angle lies not only in the scale of the direct economic loss, but in the way that loss interacts with Africa’s demographic structure. The continent is the fastest-growing in population in the world and has the highest concentrations of youth, while formal job creation remains far below what is required to absorb new entrants into the labor market. In such a context, any sharp increase in fuel, food, and transport prices does not merely produce economic hardship. It generates a broad sense of blocked horizons, a phrase that often precedes the decision to migrate.
Migration here is not simply an escape from war, as it is in active conflict zones. It becomes an escape from an economy that offers no opportunity, from a state whose capacity to provide services is receding, and from a market that has lost its ability to absorb ambition. That is why the most dangerous thing a major regional war in the Middle East can do to Africa is not only to raise prices, but to shatter the psychological and social equilibrium within societies already living on the edge of fragility.
It is no coincidence that mixed migration routes from West, Central, and North Africa to Europe remain active despite all European deterrence measures.
Data from the International Organization for Migration showed that 785 migrants died or went missing at sea during the first quarter of 2025 while attempting to reach Europe through the Mediterranean and the West African Atlantic route. The organization also indicated that the global average in 2025 stood at 21 deaths per day along migration routes worldwide, even as attempts declined on some routes compared with 2024.
These figures are not merely a human tragedy. They are an indication that the pressures driving migration remain greater than the ability of walls and security policies to halt them.
At the level of arrivals to Europe, data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recorded continued maritime flows throughout 2025, with Italy, Greece, and Spain remaining at the center of the reception landscape, while some western and central Mediterranean routes continued to show a notable presence of African nationalities among arrivals.
Data relating to some routes point to tens of thousands of arrivals during 2025, which means that the networked infrastructure of migration, made up of smugglers, brokers, family links, and transit pathways, remains in place and retains the capacity to expand whenever source environments are exposed to an additional economic or security shock.
From this perspective, an Iranian-American-Israeli war, if it were to turn into a prolonged conflict or into intermittent waves of sharp escalation, could produce its African impact through five parallel pathways. The first is the energy pathway, whereby rising prices generate imported inflation that pressures local currencies, drains foreign exchange reserves, and widens budget deficits in importing countries. The second is the maritime pathway, where shipping and insurance costs rise amid disruptions in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, with the possibility of anxiety extending to Hormuz, thereby affecting both African import costs and African export costs. The third is the food pathway, because higher energy and shipping costs rapidly pass through to the prices of wheat, oils, fertilizers, and agricultural inputs. The fourth is the financing pathway, as international capital in times of tension tends to seek safe havens, reducing appetite for investment in high-risk emerging markets. The fifth is the pathway of tourism and remittances, where economies dependent on tourism flows or workers’ remittances are affected when the region enters a climate of open or semi-open war.
At this point, it is necessary to understand what these shocks mean for the ordinary African citizen. Quite simply, they mean that the price of bread rises, transport fares increase, the cost of farming goes up, new job creation slows, local currencies lose part of their value, and governments are forced to cut subsidies, raise taxes, or borrow on harsher terms. These are not neutral financial measures. They are harsh social messages telling broad sectors of society that the local future has become less attainable than before. Once confidence breaks at home, external borders begin to appear as the only promise left, even if that promise is shadowed by death in the desert or drowning at sea.
One may argue that Europe possesses sufficient legal and security instruments to contain any new wave, and that Asia is not the primary natural destination for the irregular African migrant. That is partly true, but it is not enough. Europe has indeed tightened its policies, strengthened partnerships with transit states, and broadened its deterrence discourse, yet it has not addressed the roots of the crisis in source countries. In many cases, it has merely postponed the explosion rather than prevented it.
Likewise, the discussion of Asia is not confined to irregular migration in its conventional sense. It also includes the expansion of low-skilled labor routes and certain channels of movement through the Gulf and Southeast Asia, whether in regular form or in grey zones between legality and exploitation. With any major economic deterioration in Africa, pressures will not move only northward across the Mediterranean. They will spread across wider maps, some organized and some concealed within fragile labor contracts or cross-border brokerage networks.
But does this actually lead to a change in the demographic composition of receiving countries in a way that threatens their internal societal and economic security? Here, precision is essential, and simplification must be avoided.
Yes, large and time-concentrated waves of migration can generate demographic and local pressures in some cities and receiving societies, especially if they coincide with economic slowdown, the rise of populist currents, or weak integration policies. Tensions may emerge in low-wage labor markets, in housing systems and public services, and in the broader political mood. But to claim that migration alone changes demographic composition in a way that threatens the very existence of receiving societies is a claim that requires scientific rigor. Much depends on the scale of flows, their age structure, the speed of integration, birth rates, the policies of the receiving state, and the nature of the economy itself. The real danger lies not in human diversity as such, but in the failure of political and economic management of that diversity, and in leaving the issue hostage to electoral bidding wars or blunt security responses.
Even so, the sensitivity of European and Asian societies to sudden migration waves should not be underestimated, especially at moments when economic anxiety blends with cultural and security anxieties. The European experience over the past decade has shown that just a few years of elevated inflows can be enough to reshape public discourse, expand the influence of the far right, impose new legal restrictions, and redefine the relationship between the national interior and the external border.
Accordingly, any broad economic shock in Africa resulting from a major regional war in the Middle East could quickly become a factor in renewed political polarization within Europe itself. At that point, the issue ceases to be merely humanitarian or developmental. It becomes electoral, identity-based, and security-related all at once.
From a purely African perspective, the greatest danger lies not only in the departure of people, but in the type of people who leave. When shocks intensify, it is not only the poor who migrate. Middle and upper-level professionals migrate as well: doctors, engineers, digital professionals, the most skilled artisans, and all those with some capacity for mobility. Africa then loses twice: once because it failed to retain its human resources, and once because it indirectly finances other economies by exporting raw human capital. In moments of regional war, this process accelerates because the signals coming from the global market are clear: whoever has skills should leave early, before conditions deteriorate further.
In this way, a war that is geographically somewhat distant turns into a quiet killing machine for the continent’s capabilities.
It must also be noted that the impact of the shock will not be distributed evenly within Africa. The Sahel, West Africa, and the Horn of Africa will be more exposed to rising migration drivers, not only because of poverty or conflict, but because economic weakness intersects with institutional weakness and with the existence of historically entrenched smuggling routes.
North African states, meanwhile, will bear a double burden, as they are at once states directly affected economically by shipping and energy disruptions, and states of transit, reception, and containment for growing human pressures. From this angle, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco sit at the heart of an exceptionally delicate equation, where national security intersects with the economy, border management, and humanitarian obligations.
In Egypt’s specific case, its position at the heart of the Suez Canal-Red Sea equation, alongside its regional and political weight, gives it a particular role in reading the scene and moving to mitigate its repercussions for both the African and Arab regions.
Most importantly, addressing the danger cannot begin at sea; it must begin on African land itself. It is an illusion to believe that more naval patrols or more agreements with transit governments will stop a wave driven by unemployment, inflation, and the loss of hope. What the continent needs, together with its regional and international partners, is a proactive, multi-level approach: support for food and energy price stability, financing for social protection networks, facilitation of intra-African trade to reduce dependence on distant imports, protection of supply chains, expanded investment in agriculture and local energy, and support for labor-intensive small and medium-sized enterprises, alongside the creation of regular and regulated migration pathways that reduce reliance on illegal networks. Merely addressing the consequences after they explode is like arguing over the shape of the boat while water is already seeping into its hull.
In this context, Egypt’s importance appears doubled, not only as a directly affected, neighboring, and concerned state, but also as a country capable of proposing a balanced and rational approach that neither surrenders to panic nor denies the danger. Cairo, by virtue of its location, experience, and Arab, African, and European ties, can push toward a shared vision that treats economic security as an integral part of Mediterranean, Red Sea, and African security. It can also work toward expanding development programs linked to energy, transport, logistics, agro-industrialization, and vocational training, and anchor all of that in a more mature political discourse, one that states clearly that irregular migration is not merely a border crisis, but a crisis of development, justice, and opportunity.
The conclusion is that an Iranian-American-Israeli war, if it slips into a wider or longer trajectory, threatens Africa not only with a high economic bill, but with something deeper: the expansion of economic despair, the transformation of hardship into sustained human displacement, the depletion of human capital, and the opening of new fronts of tension inside Europe and along some Asian routes.
The issue, then, is not whether migration will happen or not. It is already happening. The real issue lies in its scale, its speed, its composition, and the ability of both sending and receiving states to manage it without allowing it to become fuel for wider social and political crises.
And when we fail to stop war, wisdom at the very least requires that we prevent its shrapnel from spreading to the tables of the poor, to the boats of those fleeing, and to the maps of hatred within receiving societies. For when wars are prolonged, they do not destroy armies alone. They also redistribute people themselves, and write across the maps of economy, geography, and demography lines that diplomatic statements cannot easily erase.
- Ramy Zohdy — African Affairs Expert .
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