GOOD MORNING CHOP FAMILY!
Wakey wakey, get your rear in gear and back into the rat race. But remember to get some coffee, tea and maybe some akara …
“When the music changes, so does the dance…”
African Proverb
NATO's Ankara summit put the Sahel on the map, literally.
This year's summit, held July 7-8 in Ankara, was no different on the surface: defense spending dominated, with allies working through last year's commitment to hit 5% of GDP by 2035, and the usual friction over Russia, Ukraine, and Washington's shrinking appetite for footing Europe's bill.
Standard NATO fare. But buried in the pre-summit analysis was something that should interest every reader of this newsletter.
The 32-member alliance met in Turkey and, alongside the usual Russia and defense-spending talk, formally acknowledged that instability across North Africa and the Sahel now carries direct security implications for Europe. When the world's biggest military alliance starts drawing maps that include Bamako and Khartoum, it's worth a paragraph.
MARKET MOVERS
BUSINESS
Business relies on people and money. Africa has the people part down pat. Population is exploding on the continent, and in the next 100 years, Africa will be the most populous continent.
Three of the twenty most populous cities on Earth are now African, and almost nobody in the West has noticed.
According to World Population Review's 2026 city data, Cairo ranks 6th globally with roughly 23 million people, Kinshasa 11th with about 18.5 million, and Lagos 14th with around 17.8 million.
Together, those three cities hold close to 60 million people, more than the entire population of countries like Kenya, Spain, or South Africa. And unlike the mature megacities of Japan and Europe, they are still growing fast: Kinshasa is expanding at more than 5% a year, which means it adds roughly a Brussels-sized population every single year.
The bigger picture is the one that should be on every investor's whiteboard: by 2050, the UN projects nearly 70% of humanity will live in cities, and a wildly disproportionate share of that growth will happen in Africa.
The continent's urban population already exceeds 720 million. The cities where the future gets built, where the customers, the workers, the culture, and the markets of 2050 are being formed right now, are increasingly on this continent. The rest of the world is only just beginning to update its mental map.
FINANCE
Iran Closed the Strait of Hormuz Again. Oil Shrugged. For Now.
If you only read the headline, you'd have expected carnage. Iran announced on Sunday it had closed the Strait of Hormuz after a vessel incident, and the US launched a third round of strikes on Iranian targets. The Strait is the single most important chokepoint in the global energy system: roughly a fifth of the world's oil and a huge share of its liquefied natural gas squeeze through a channel just 21 miles wide at its narrowest. Close it, in theory, and prices should rocket.
Instead, Brent drifted down toward $76 a barrel. Not up. Down. Markets, it turns out, have watched this particular thriller enough times to guess the ending: lots of dramatic noise, a brief spike, and then the realization that global supply is currently ample, US shale is pumping, and the strait has never actually stayed closed for long. Traders are pricing in resolution, not catastrophe. It's either impressive discipline or dangerous complacency, and we won't know which until it's obvious in hindsight.
Don’t get it twisted, for Africa, the calculus is genuinely double-sided, and it's worth spelling out. Most of the continent are net fuel importers, so a genuine, sustained Hormuz-driven oil spike would be painful: pricier diesel, higher transport and food costs, renewed inflation pressure just as several African central banks were finally easing. But there's a hedge in the mix that didn't exist a couple of years ago.
Nigeria's Dangote refinery, now Europe's top jet-fuel supplier some months, gets more valuable, not less, when global crude and refined-product prices climb, and a supply shock that sidelines Gulf barrels makes African refining capacity strategically precious. The continent is no longer a pure price-taker praying for cheap oil. It's starting, finally, to have chips on both sides of the table.
Quick Bites
The High-Tech Scarecrow: South African corn farms have officially gone sci-fi. Agribusinesses are deploying high-tech robotic dogs to patrol fields and guard high-value crops from thieves and pests, turning the average farm into a scene straight out of Black Mirror.
The Ultimate Cat Fight: Researchers testing local, organic agricultural alternatives in Uganda discovered that a homegrown catnip-infused lotion repels mosquitoes just as effectively as DEET. It turns out what cats have known all along is about to disrupt the heavy-chemical insect repellent market.
The Bureaucratic Twilight Zone: A massive corporate and public uproar has erupted in Nigeria after investigative sleuths exposed a completely fake federal government agency that had somehow set up a fully operational, rogue headquarters right inside the real government building. Talk about hiding in plain sight.
What Else is Cooking?
The Run Is Over, But the Record Stands: France End Morocco, and Africa Takes a Bow.
African nations are done at the World Cup, but they tried. The biggest story of the games were centered around the tiny African nation - Cape Verde.
But now, the big dogs are lined up and it will be fun to see who will prevail. I have no “dog in this fight”, but I am leaning for Mbappe.
Dish of the Day 🥘
AKARA - this is one of may fave morning meals. I love the sound of the hawkers shouting - “ogi Akara!” early in the morning, and that is my cue to buy some hot and fresh, deep fried, golden akara. Akara are basically deep fried bean cakes, made from ground black-eyed peas along with a mix of spices. Ogi or pap, is a custard that goes nicely with this dish!
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