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Global container volumes reached a new all-time record in 2025, reaching 192.9 million TEUs up from 184.3 million TEUs the previous year.
Capping this strong performance, December closed at a new monthly record of 16.97 million TEUs, reflecting a full year of sustained growth. Among the standout performers, Sub-Saharan Africa emerged as one of the world's most dynamic import markets, finishing the year up 18% year-on-year. Building on this momentum, January 2026 remained robust, with global volumes reaching 16.03 million TEUs — and Sub-Saharan Africa once again outperforming all major trade regions, with imports up 13% and exports up 16% versus January 2025.
Throughout this period, ships across African trade lanes continued to sail full, with strong demand consistently absorbing all available capacity.
On the air cargo side, African carriers posted the strongest regional performance globally across the first two months of the quarter. Demand grew 18% year-on-year in January 2026, before accelerating further to above 21% in February — nearly double the global average of 11% — marking the fifth consecutive month in which African airlines led all regions according to IATA, with demand growth outpacing capacity expansion of 17%. Across trade corridors, the Asia-Africa Lane surged 61%, recording the fastest growth globally and its eighth consecutive month of expansion, reflecting a structurally deepening demand for Africa-linked trade flows. On the supply side, new capacity nodes continue to consolidate: Ethiopian Airlines transported 785,000 tons of freight in its 2024-2025 fiscal year, up 4% year-on-year, Nairobi is scaling cold-chain infrastructure for horticulture exports, and Casablanca launched a new freight link to Dakar in January 2026. Africa still accounts for just 2% of global air cargo volumes — but the demand signal entering Q1 2026 was unambiguous.
That trajectory was abruptly disrupted on 28 February 2026. US and Israeli military strikes on Iran triggered an event without modern precedent: the simultaneous closure of both strategic maritime corridors through the Middle East — the Strait of Hormuz on one side, the Red Sea and Suez Canal on the other, already compromised by Houthi attacks — severing the two main transit arteries linking Asia, Europe and Africa. On the ocean side, the vast majority of major carriers immediately suspended Hormuz transits, leaving 138 container ships stranded in the Persian Gulf, with nearly 470,000 TEUs withdrawn from active circulation overnight. With Red Sea disruptions already forcing Suez avoidance, Cape of Good Hope routing became the only viable alternative for most operators. The commercial response was swift: War Risk Surcharges averaging $1,500 to $2,000 per TEU were stacked with Emergency Fuel Surcharges of $150 to $400 per box, further compounding costs on the continent's most active import corridors.
In the air, the shock was equally severe. Dubai International, struck in the opening days of the conflict, suspended operations, triggering a cascade of closures across Abu Dhabi, Doha, Muscat, Kuwait City and Amman, with over 18,000 flights cancelled within 24 hours. As of 1 April, the Gulf's major hubs continue to operate at severely reduced capacity, with movements largely restricted to repatriation, cargo and government-approved flights. For Africa, the disruption landed simultaneously across both freight modes. As Adedayo Olawuyi, Chief Commercial Officer of Uganda Airlines, noted: "One of the most immediate effects we are likely to see if the situation is not quickly resolved is loss of cargo. We take a lot of perishables to Dubai, but it is also a major supply base for the region, generating a lot of business travel by traders." Beyond perishables, the Middle East functions as Africa's primary transit bridge to Asian markets, leaving East African exporters, landlocked economies and intra-regional operators simultaneously exposed with no viable alternative on either mode. As IATA Director General Willie Walsh summarized, rising fuel costs, supply shortages in parts of the world, and the severe disruption to key Gulf cargo hubs represent challenges whose resolution depends, above all, on an early end to the conflict.
The fragility of air and maritime corridors has underscored, more than ever, the strategic importance of building robust ground-based freight alternatives — an agenda Africa had already set in motion well before the crisis began. In South Africa, the 2026 Budget designated transport and logistics as the single largest component of public infrastructure spending.
At the inaugural National Transport Conference on 16 March, President Ramaphosa confirmed the conditional allocation of train slots equivalent to 24 million tons per year to 11 private operators, with a national rail freight target of 250 million tons annually by 2029. Private capital is following: Traxtion closed a R3.4 billion rolling stock programme — the largest private freight rail investment in South Africa's history — with upgraded locomotives entering mainline service in Q3 2026. Further north, the Lobito Atlantic Railway secured a $753 million financing package in January 2026 to rehabilitate the 1,300-kilometre corridor linking Angola's Port of Lobito to the DRC border, projecting a tenfold increase in freight throughput, a 30% reduction in mineral logistics costs, and a compression of transit times from 45 days by road to just two by rail — a strategic shift for copper and cobalt flows at precisely the moment global corridor reliability is most in question.
Beyond logistics, the trade policy environment added a further layer of structural complexity. Africa's two largest external partners moved in sharply opposite directions through Q1 2026. The US reciprocal tariff regime — duties of 10% to 30% introduced in August 2025 — continued to erode the practical value of AGOA, now extended only temporarily through end-2026, leaving exporters in textiles, agri-processing and manufacturing in sustained uncertainty. China moved decisively the other way: from 1 May 2026, Beijing will implement zero tariffs on imports from 53 African countries, reinforcing the Asia-Africa corridor that was already the continent's fastest-growing freight lane entering the year and accelerating an eastward reorientation of trade flows the volume data was already beginning to reflect.
Q1 2026 ultimately condensed, within the space of a few weeks, the full breadth of dynamics shaping African freight: record volumes, long-term structural investment, a reshaping of global trade balances — and a stark reminder that the continent's logistics ambitions remain exposed to external shocks as sudden as they are unpredictable.