How the U.S. war with Iran is widening inequality in Africa

LUANDA, Angola — At crowded Catinton Market, men and women hawk fruits and vegetables under umbrellas that provide little protection from a scorching sun.

The bustle on a recent weekday morning here in Angola’s capital felt far from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. But almost everyone had felt its impact.

This African nation of 40 million is one of the world’s most unequal. Half the population lives on less than $3.65 a day. Oil revenue, meanwhile, enriches a small ruling elite.

The Iran conflict has widened the divide.

Angola is one of the few oil producers that doesn’t ship supply through the Strait of Hormuz. So while the rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer hit the poor, growing reliance on Angolan oil has been a boon for the wealthy and the well-connected.

Many at Catinton Market, located in a densely populated part of the capital city, are suffering.

Veronica Simon, 35, and Isabelle Ferreira, 31, sat side-by-side one recent morning selling bright red peppers. The women, who described themselves as friends and colleagues, were struggling to pay their children’s school fees.

Since February, they said, the wholesale price of a box of peppers had quadrupled. They weren’t sure why. Neither had heard about the war in Iran.

What they knew was that, in recent months, it had become rare to earn more than $2.50 a day, Simon said.

“It is not enough, but what can we do?” she asked. “We have no other options.”

In Angola and other developing nations, the war is only the latest economic shock. It has “increased global economic uncertainty,” economist Arsénio Bumba said, pushing up the costs of imports. “The poorest households are the most affected in virtually every country.”

But for the government here, the rising price of oil and the ability to export it have meant an influx of cash. Oil accounts for about 30 percent of the Angola’s GDP, 65 percent of government revenue and more than 95 percent of physical exports, according to the World Bank.

Still, with the prices of cooking oil, sugar, rice and butter all up, peanut vendor Jucy Manuel said, “I’m cooking half of what I did before.” Feeding her three children, she said, has been difficult.

The government planned its 2026 budget on the expectation that oil it would sell for $61 per barrel. But Brent crude, the international reference point, is now about $87 per barrel.

The government has used the windfall to pay down debt. Officials have also announced the creation of stocks of food and medicine to limit the effects of supply disruptions, and implemented measures aimed at easing inflation.

People who live along the trash-filled waterway have long felt abandoned. They say that there remains immense frustration in Angola, a former colony of Portugal, with corruption among the political elite, which has fueled sometimes violent protests.

With a presidential election scheduled next year, pressure on the government to address poverty is high. The country has been ruled by a single political party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, since independence.

Eva Damiao, 82, lives in a shack of corrugated tin in Bairro da Lixeira, a neighborhood surrounded by mounds of trash in the hills above Luanda. Her children have died, she said, leaving her to rely on her grandchildren for support — and they on her.

Electricity here is spotty; there’s no running water. No one believes the community will see any of the government’s war-related windfall.

“Despite the fact that they have more money, prices are going up,” said Joveth Hebo, 33. “All Africans are suffering.”

Hebo, who has been following the war on the radio and in the newspapers, has lived here for years. He was studying to be a lawyer, he said, until financial pressures forced him to drop out in 2013. He has learned his near-perfect English from music and books, practicing by himself, because no one else here speaks the language.

Hebo has seen prices rise amid the war but said he hadn’t tracked them too closely. It has been years since he had a good job, he said, so he rarely does much shopping.

Often, he and his friends try their luck searching through the mounds of trash here for scraps of iron or anything else they might sell.

He believes any extra revenue from the war will stay with the elites. He doesn’t see any making it to the people here.

“It won’t help us. It will help them,” he said. “The majority of us are suffering, and they don’t care about us.”