The paper's week-eight account of West Africa's fuel crisis documented a continent absorbing a Hormuz shock it had no part in creating. Friday produces the operational evidence. Niger's mines and petroleum ministry issued a formal rationing order this week, capping retail supply at selected stations and directing priority allocation to the capital. [1] Pump prices across the continent are up 65% on average since February, the highest run in a decade.

The Dangote refinery's predicament is the sharper signal. Africa's largest refinery — built at $20 billion with the expressed goal of ending Nigeria's fuel import dependency — is now itself importing crude after Middle East cargoes rerouted or disappeared. [2] The refinery designed to feed the continent is drinking from the same shrunk tap.

Kenya's diesel price is up 24.2% since March even after the government cut its fuel excise tax. The pattern repeats across the Sahel and West Africa: currencies thinning, budgets absorbing subsidies, fiscal space vanishing. None of the affected governments sit on the G7. None were consulted about the blockade. None appear in the G7 communiqué issued in Washington this week, which discusses global growth without naming the continent where growth is collapsing fastest.

The blockade's architects treat Africa's fuel math as externality. It is the bill.

-- PRIYA SHARMA, Delhi