Surging Chinese trade with Africa and the lifting of tariffs for most countries on the continent are set to boost the use of the yuan, aiding Beijing’s broader bid to build alternatives to Western finance and reduce the dominance of the US dollar in international trade and settlement.

China-Africa trade rose by nearly eighteen percent last year, and the tariff cuts on imports from fifty-three African countries in May are expected to increase the flows and the yuan-denominated settlements that accompany them, advancing the gradual internationalization of the Chinese currency that Beijing has pursued as part of its effort to reshape the global financial architecture.

The current war-driven energy shock is exposing a hierarchy of vulnerability among the world’s major economies, and the broad picture is clear: the United States is the most secure in supply terms, Europe is the most exposed, and China sits somewhere in between with substantial protection but not immunity.

As the war enters its fourth week, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz since March 2 has driven up prices for oil, gas, fuels, fertilizers and other industrial inputs, forcing governments and companies to confront a basic question: how much of their energy system depends on domestic production and how much depends on imports.

Even a formal agreement between the United States and Iran to halt the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz would not immediately restore shipping traffic, because the hundreds of vessels and roughly twenty thousand seafarers trapped in the Gulf cannot leave without solid guarantees of safe passage that no ceasefire alone can provide.

This sobering assessment illuminates a critical dimension of the crisis that the focus on diplomatic and military developments has obscured: the recovery of global shipping through Hormuz depends not merely on the cessation of hostilities but on the restoration of the confidence, insurance frameworks, and security assurances that commercial maritime operations require.