By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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The war drums are beating louder in the Middle East, and North Africa and Greater East Africa could soon be in the eye of a storm like they haven’t witnessed in a century.

On Monday, at least 560 people, including 50 children, were killed and 1,835 wounded in Israel’s fierce bombardment of various parts of Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry said.

The Lebanese Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah, retaliated with a barrage of missiles at Israeli air bases, sending world leaders and the United Nations calling for urgent de-escalation and experts warning of the risk of a wider Middle East war.

Hezbollah, which is closely allied to Iran, has been described as a “state within a state”, and has grown into an organisation with seats in the Lebanese government, operates a radio and satellite TV station, social services and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon’s borders.

The attack on Lebanon is part of the widening conflict from the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Read: Tensions remain high as Gaza death toll surpasses 40,000

Hamas, a Palestinian nationalist Islamist political organisation with a military wing called the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.

Israel replied on the ground and with furious bombings that, a year later, have flattened several parts of Gaza, had by Monday killed more than 41,400 people, and injured at least 95,818 Palestinians.

Diplomats and security experts warn that Iran could be dragged more directly into the mess, as well as the Houthis in Yemen, which could in turn draw the US and possibly some of its Nato allies like the UK and France, which were active in the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011, into the fight.

In addition to the horrific human toll of such a war, the impact on livelihoods and economies in North Africa and Greater East Africa would be disastrous.

It’s estimated that up to 12 per cent of global trade passes through the Suez Canal – and the Red Sea along the coasts of Sudan, Eritrea, Sudan, and the Gulf of Aden along Somalia into/out of the Indian Ocean - every year. Additionally, a whopping 30 per cent of all global shipping container traffic uses those stretches of water.

A war would severely disrupt and make shipping very costly through this route, which would send the costs of imports, including fuel, sky high for countries in Greater Africa, and choke off their exports.

At a high point not too long ago, up to 74,000 Africans were leaving from the Horn of Africa on smugglers’ boats for the shores of Yemen this year, and on to the Gulf states. Few would make the crossings with a Middle Eastern war.

Additionally, the majority of 3.6 million to 4 million migrants from Africa estimated to be working in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, could find themselves jobless.

In so much as many of them endure slave conditions in the GCC, these countries still soak up huge economic and political pressure for the migrants’ home country governments.

But the repressive GCC regimes could be toppled by Pan-Arabist and radical militant Islamist movements, as they waver with their Abraham Accords agreements (Arab–Israeli normalisation deals).

The flow of aid and investments from the UAE and Saudi Arabia to Africa, would certainly slow down, or dry out completely. An Africa with 3.6 million recently returned youth workers from the GCC to hard economic conditions will likely set off deadly fires rather quickly.

The tragedy of humans is that war has been the force that, more than others, has made and unmade nations, and raised and felled great economies.

The US emerged as a world superpower while the Europeans ruined themselves with two World Wars. China rose as a global power as the U.S. and the Soviet Union (Russia) wasted their treasures and human resources in expensive Cold War wars.

We have a responsibility to catch those who are falling in war, but Africa has never cashed in on such crises to rise to global dominance.

Can Greater East Africa buck the trend? Somalia could both profit and hurt. A new Arab-Israel war would probably collapse the Somaliland and Puntland sovereignty movements, but bolster Al-Shabaab.

With its UAE patrons bogged down, the Rapid Support Forces of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, could flounder, and hand the initiative to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and de facto president of Sudan, in its deadly soon-to-be two-year war.

Kenya and Tanzania would see their ports, especially Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, respectively, rise in international importance as Djibouti gets marooned. Uganda could profit in a big way, if its 1,443-kilometre East African Oil Pipeline to Tanzania’s port of Tanga were complete, enabling it to charge exorbitant rates for its crude.

A huge amount of capital, and expertise, would flee the Gulf, looking for a home nearby in Africa.

In Eastern Africa, the countries with the best and most transparent financial regimes, the most accomplished human resources, open markets, and infrastructure – especially digital – will profit and see themselves becoming little Hong Kongs.

Formula One would not hold races in Abu Dhabi (UAE) Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia if bombs were landing in the distance.

It might be time for Rwanda to double down on that F1 racing circuit.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3