“This investigation uncovers how restrictions designed in Washington ripple far beyond their intended targets—undermining financial systems, disrupting healthcare, dismantling trade networks, and eroding the very social fabrics of African states.”

 

By
Prof. MarkAnthony Nze
Investigative Journalist | Public Intellectual | Global Governance Analyst | Health & Social Care Expert

 

Editorial Statement

Sanctions are a weapon dressed up as diplomacy. Washington calls them “smart” and “targeted,” but in Africa their impact is anything but surgical. They bleed economies, choke small businesses, starve hospitals of medicine, and punish the powerless while leaving the powerful intact. The rhetoric of precision is a lie. What we are witnessing is not strategy, it is collective punishment in slow motion.

This series strips away the polite camouflage. It follows the trail of frozen bank accounts, collapsed currencies, and children turned away from clinics because shipments were blocked at the border. It documents how sanctions, far from weakening regimes, often entrench them—feeding black markets, strengthening authoritarian networks, and destroying the fragile middle class that might have been the engine of democratic change.

We are not naïve. Africa has its share of corrupt leaders and brutal regimes. But let the record show: no tyrant has ever been toppled by watching his people starve. Instead, sanctions create deserts where reform should grow, silencing hope while strengthening the very hands they claim to bind.

At Africa Digital News, New York, we refuse to accept the myth. We publish this investigation because truth demands confrontation. Sanctions are not bloodless. They are not neutral. They are acts of war waged without declaration—wars in which the casualties are African mothers, fathers, and children.

The time has come to rethink. If the world is serious about justice, it must abandon failed tools that kill silently and replace them with frameworks that hold leaders accountable without crucifying nations. Anything less is complicity.

This series is our editorial line in the sand: Africa’s future cannot be negotiated away in backrooms of power, and its people must never again be the collateral damage of someone else’s foreign policy theater.

— The Editorial Board,
People & Polity Inc., New York

 

Executive Summary

Economic sanctions, often presented as surgical tools of diplomacy, have become one of the most blunt and devastating forces shaping African economies. This investigation uncovers how restrictions designed in Washington ripple far beyond their intended targets—undermining financial systems, disrupting healthcare, dismantling trade networks, and eroding the very social fabrics of African states.

Sanctions first emerged as narrowly defined lists against specific governments or elites. But over time, they metastasized into broad regimes whose impact extends across banking systems, small businesses, and ordinary households. The “banking freeze effect” chokes SMEs that cannot access credit, while national currencies collapse under pressure, leading to inflation and economic stagnation. Healthcare systems crumble as imports of medicines, vaccines, and equipment are delayed or blocked, and humanitarian exemptions—when promised—often fail in practice.

The reach of sanctions is not confined to targeted states. Secondary sanctions punish neighboring economies, forcing entire regions to absorb shockwaves. Trade routes are reshaped, informal markets and crypto ecosystems emerge as lifelines, and black markets thrive, enriching illicit networks while draining legitimacy from formal governance. Yet despite their destructive power, sanctions rarely achieve their declared political objectives. Authoritarian regimes—from Cuba to Syria, Zimbabwe to Russia—adapt, consolidate, and exploit sanctions for propaganda, while citizens suffer collective punishment.

The humanitarian costs are staggering: food insecurity, medicine shortages, power cuts, rising unemployment, and eroded public trust. Governments across Africa are increasingly mobilizing to challenge sanctions, lobbying for exemptions, and demanding a voice in shaping global frameworks that have long been imposed without their consent.

This exposé concludes that sanctions, as currently designed, are structurally flawed. They fail as instruments of regime change, inflict disproportionate harm on civilians, and perpetuate a global hierarchy of power. Reform is urgent. A new sanctions architecture—anchored in transparency, humanitarian safeguards, and measurable outcomes—is essential. Without it, sanctions will remain less a tool of justice and more a quiet war on the vulnerable.

The choice for the global community is clear: reform sanctions or abandon them. Anything less is complicity.

 

Part 1: The First Sanction Lists and Their Targets

A quiet economic war began decades ago. The first shots were sanctions.

1.1 The Geopolitical Genesis of U.S. Sanctions in Africa

In the post-colonial decades of the 20th century, as newly independent African nations began asserting their sovereignty and strategic autonomy, the United States deployed a potent non-military tool to shape global order: economic sanctions. These early punitive measures—publicly framed as responses to egregious human rights abuses, anti-democratic regimes, or threats to regional stability—were often cloaked in the language of moral authority. But beneath the diplomatic rationale lay complex geostrategic calculus.

Sanctions, especially those that emerged during the Cold War, targeted governments and leaders seen as veering too close to Soviet influence or threatening U.S. commercial and political interests. As early as the 1960s and 70s, economic sanctions began appearing on Washington’s radar as an instrument of foreign policy. One of the earliest and most notable cases was South Africa, where apartheid-era policies led to a global outcry and eventually triggered a series of U.S. sanctions in the 1980s (Historians for Peace and Democracy, 2025).

1.2 The Rise of Selective Economic Warfare

However, even before the anti-apartheid movement gained legislative traction in Washington, the U.S. had experimented with selective sanctions. These were not just blanket trade embargoes but increasingly complex restrictions targeting arms sales, foreign aid, banking access, and leadership assets. A timeline of these early measures, curated by the Global Challenges Journal (2022), reveals a shift from unilateral embargoes to multi-layered sanctions designed to isolate key sectors.

The United States Trade Representative (2025) outlined how early African sanctions were codified into trade policy, citing instances where U.S. companies were prohibited from doing business with state-owned firms in countries like Angola, Libya, and Sudan. These measures disproportionately affected nationalized industries—particularly oil, mining, and infrastructure—chilling foreign investment and locking African economies out of global capital markets.

1.3 From Regimes to Revenue Streams: The OFAC Evolution

One of the central architects of this approach, former OFAC director Richard Newcomb, argued that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) refined sanctions as a “surgical” policy instrument by the 1980s and 90s. As detailed in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law (Newcomb, 2024), this period saw a marked transition toward targeting not just regimes but the financial arteries that sustained them.

Further insight comes from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (2024), which describes how sanction lists evolved through Executive Orders, Congressional mandates, and multilateral pressures via the United Nations. The emphasis increasingly fell on leaders, elites, and state-linked corporations—naming individuals and entities in OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. These early designations signaled to the world’s banking and trade networks that certain African leaders were persona non grata in global finance.

1.4 Sanctions as Preemptive Doctrine

By the early 2000s, a precedent had been set: U.S. sanctions would not simply punish overt belligerence, but could be activated as preemptive tools against regimes that threatened liberal economic norms, harbored dissidents, or pursued resource nationalism. And while the language of these sanctions often invoked democracy, accountability, or peacekeeping, the real targets were often geoeconomic—sectors critical to national sovereignty and regional leverage.

In retrospect, the first sanction lists tell a story more nuanced than punitive diplomacy. They reflect the emergence of a new form of soft war—one waged not with weapons, but with spreadsheets and blacklists. The casualties were not only corrupt elites but national currencies, public institutions, and entire generations of economic potential.

 

 

Part 2: How Sanctions Spread Beyond Their Original Scope

 

Sanctions aimed at a few often punish the many.

2.1 The Elastic Reach of Targeted Measures

The term “targeted sanctions” was introduced with the promise of precision. These tools, unlike blunt embargoes, were designed to pinpoint culpable elites, shield civilian populations, and exert pressure without inflicting indiscriminate hardship. But reality defied theory. In the African context, even the most focused restrictions often unravelled into wider economic consequences—ensnaring entire sectors and societies.

This phenomenon has been thoroughly explored in the work of Stępień (2024), who observes that sanctions targeting company executives, central bank governors, or ruling party financiers inevitably reshape how international corporations, financial institutions, and supply chains interact with the sanctioned country as a whole. In practice, risk-averse firms and banks frequently adopt a posture of “overcompliance,” severing ties even when legal avenues remain.

2.2 The Spillover Spiral

What begins as a calibrated intervention quickly evolves into systemic exclusion. This is especially acute in banking. The Council on Foreign Relations (2020) notes that once high-level individuals or specific entities in a country are sanctioned, entire banks or sectors become radioactive by association. These institutions, facing immense reputational risk, withdraw en masse—even if only a few accounts are formally frozen.

South Africa offers a timely example. While U.S. sanctions have not yet been applied comprehensively, threats of financial blacklisting have already triggered nervous retrenchment. As reported by SP Global (2025), major international banks began scaling back correspondent services and credit lines to South African institutions, wary of being swept up in secondary sanctions. The unintended effect: legitimate trade, credit access, and foreign investment are choked across the board.

2.3 Financial Contagion and SME Paralysis

The ripple effect is particularly cruel on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—the backbone of most African economies. As the Policy Center for the New South (2023) details, even indirect sanctions undermine local businesses’ ability to import goods, secure foreign exchange, or remit payments. SMEs, already vulnerable, often lack the legal or financial buffers to navigate this new terrain. As correspondent banking channels evaporate, these businesses face de facto isolation from global markets.

Johnstone et al. (2025) from the Hoover Institution illustrate this through cross-regional analysis: in countries like Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and Sudan, informal blacklists circulated by compliance departments have more bite than formal U.N. or U.S. decrees. This web of informal restriction expands the sanctions regime far beyond its stated scope—crippling sectors like construction, tourism, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture.

2.4 Humanitarian Exemptions in Name Only

Sanctions regimes often claim to include humanitarian carve-outs. But the devil is in the implementation. The Brookings Institution (2023) argues that while humanitarian exemptions exist on paper, logistical and financial intermediaries frequently refuse to process any transactions related to sanctioned jurisdictions, even for food or medical aid. The result is chilling: a blockade effect without a declaration of war.

This legal ambiguity and institutional self-censorship were also documented by The Carter Center (2020), which studied Syrian sanctions but found strong parallels in sub-Saharan Africa. Their report shows how banks and transporters treat humanitarian shipments as legal minefields, further delaying or denying life-saving supplies.

2.5 The Bureaucratization of Exclusion

One of the more insidious evolutions of sanctions is their bureaucratic permanence. Once a regime is in place, even for a targeted group or event, the momentum to maintain and expand restrictions becomes embedded in government institutions, corporate compliance protocols, and diplomatic strategies. The Council on Foreign Relations (2020) cautions that what starts as an agile policy often ossifies into a standing economic blockade, even after political realities shift.

Thus, the spread of sanctions beyond their original scope is not merely incidental. It is systemic. It reflects a global financial system that prioritizes legal risk aversion over equitable engagement—and a geopolitical order that weaponizes access to finance with little recourse for those left in the wake.

Part 3: The Banking Freeze Effect on African SMEs

How sanctions weaponize financial pipelines and strangle the continent’s entrepreneurial lifeblood.

3.1 Introduction: When Banks Become Battlefields

Economic sanctions are often framed as a “peaceful alternative” to war, a non-violent instrument designed to pressure adversarial regimes into compliance with international norms. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies a machinery that extends its reach far beyond political elites, penetrating the everyday financial ecosystems that sustain livelihoods. In Africa, the banking freeze effect—triggered by sanctions—has emerged as one of the most devastating, though less visible, consequences.

Unlike large corporations with diversified access to capital markets, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute more than 80% of employment and economic activity on the continent, are disproportionately vulnerable. When banks sever ties, restrict flows, or impose onerous compliance burdens to avoid secondary sanctions, SMEs are the first to suffocate. Their reliance on fragile domestic banking infrastructure, coupled with limited reserves and razor-thin profit margins, means even a temporary disruption can collapse entire value chains.

Sanctions weaponize the very lifeblood of modern economies: the banking system. Once financial channels are blocked, commerce becomes not only difficult but in many cases, impossible. The damage radiates outward—not in the form of bombs or embargoes—but through the silent paralysis of business accounts, the freezing of trade finance, and the evaporation of trust in the financial sector.

3.2 How Sanctions Weaponize Banking Systems

The unique power of sanctions lies in the United States’ dominance over global financial infrastructure. Nearly all major international transactions flow through U.S. dollar clearinghouses and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). By cutting sanctioned entities—or even entire jurisdictions—off from these systems, Washington effectively weaponizes access to money itself (Council on Foreign Relations, 2020).

But the sanctions net extends beyond targeted governments or oligarchs. Banks across Africa, fearful of being accused of facilitating illicit flows, often adopt “de-risking” strategies: closing accounts, halting correspondent banking relationships, and tightening scrutiny over ordinary transactions. This over-compliance—driven by fear rather than legal requirement—spills collateral damage onto SMEs who have no direct link to sanctioned actors but nonetheless find themselves trapped in a frozen banking landscape (SpringerLink, 2024).

The result is what might be called financial suffocation without trial. Small businesses attempting to import goods, pay suppliers, or service loans suddenly face inexplicable delays or outright denials of transactions. Entrepreneurs who once relied on relatively fluid cross-border transfers now encounter an impenetrable wall of compliance paperwork, fees, and cancellations. For a cash-starved SME, these are not mere inconveniences—they are death sentences.

3.3 Early Banking Disruptions in Africa

The vulnerability of African SMEs to sanctions-related banking freezes is not theoretical—it has been unfolding for over a decade, intensifying with each new wave of geopolitical crises.

In 2023, as the United States banking system trembled under a crisis partly tied to sanction-driven liquidity adjustments, African economies experienced ripple effects. The Policy Center for the New South noted that SMEs in Africa faced disproportionate harm, since local banks, already undercapitalized, became reluctant to extend credit or process external payments, fearing exposure to U.S. penalties (Policy Center for the New South, 2023).

This was not an isolated incident. Historical studies demonstrate a consistent pattern: whenever sanctions expand, African financial institutions retreat into self-protective shells. According to the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law (2024), sanctions rarely remain confined to their intended targets. Instead, banks in “neutral” or non-target states withdraw, preemptively curbing transactions linked to entire regions. African SMEs, dependent on fragile global banking pipelines, become collateral damage.

Consider a Nigerian agricultural exporter attempting to secure fertilizer imports from Europe. Though neither Nigeria nor the European supplier is under sanctions, the financing bank may freeze the transaction due to indirect links in the supply chain with a sanctioned Russian chemical company. The deal collapses, crops go unplanted, and an entire local economy suffers—without any political actor even being aware of the farmer’s existence.

3.4 Compliance Costs and the Rise of Banking Paralysis

For African SMEs, the banking freeze manifests most painfully in compliance costs. Banks burdened with the responsibility of screening for sanctioned entities increasingly pass costs down the financial chain. Routine cross-border transactions that once required modest fees now involve layers of legal reviews, enhanced due diligence charges, and sometimes outright rejections (SpringerLink, 2024).

For a multinational corporation, absorbing a $10,000 compliance surcharge may be tolerable. For a two-person logistics firm in Accra, this surcharge erases annual profit margins. More dangerously, unpredictable transaction delays mean SMEs can no longer guarantee timely delivery to clients, undermining trust and threatening their reputations.

This compliance-heavy environment has created what analysts call “shadow exclusion”—businesses are not officially banned, but they are functionally locked out of the global banking system. Entrepreneurs often turn to informal channels or black markets to keep trade alive. But this exposes them to even greater risks: predatory exchange rates, vulnerability to fraud, and exposure to legal penalties for unregulated transactions.

3.5 Correspondent Banking Withdrawal and the Currency Crisis

The most catastrophic effect of sanctions on African SMEs has been the withdrawal of correspondent banking relationships (CBRs). These are the financial linkages that allow local banks to settle international payments. When U.S. or European banks terminate CBRs with African counterparts—fearing regulatory backlash—entire economies lose access to global markets.

According to Reuters (2025), South African banks are already bracing for fallout from tensions with Washington, with several foreign institutions reviewing or suspending correspondent ties. This has immediate implications: SMEs that rely on trade financing, currency exchanges, or letters of credit suddenly find themselves unable to conduct routine business.

The withdrawal of CBRs creates currency bottlenecks. Without access to dollar clearing systems, African banks struggle to source hard currency. The impact is magnified in SMEs, which often need small volumes of foreign exchange for machinery, pharmaceuticals, or IT services. A sudden scarcity of dollars inflates local currency volatility, eroding purchasing power and triggering inflation.

A case study from Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation crisis demonstrates this dynamic: SMEs bore the brunt of currency collapse, as their reliance on daily liquidity for payroll, imports, and supplies made them uniquely vulnerable. While larger companies hedged through offshore accounts or diversified markets, small businesses collapsed in droves—destroying jobs and livelihoods.

3.6 South Africa as a Bellwether

In early 2025, headlines warned that South Africa’s banks were bracing for fallout from a widening rift with Washington. Reuters (2025) reported that several major foreign banks had begun reassessing their correspondent ties with South African institutions, fearing potential exposure to secondary sanctions tied to Pretoria’s foreign policy positions.

The implications for SMEs are profound. South Africa is not only the continent’s most industrialized economy but also a central banking hub for sub-Saharan Africa. If its banks lose access to correspondent networks or dollar-clearing systems, the ripple effects would devastate SMEs across the region.

Imagine a textile SME in Lesotho dependent on raw material imports financed through South African banks. Or a Zambian IT firm relying on payment gateways processed through Johannesburg. A freeze in South Africa’s banking arteries would effectively choke off these smaller economies, demonstrating how sanctions weaponized at one node can paralyze entire regions.

This scenario illustrates a broader truth: when sanctions undermine anchor economies, SMEs in neighboring states suffer collateral damage beyond calculation.

3.7 Case Studies: SMEs in the Crosshairs

3.7.1 Healthcare Imports Blocked

Consider an SME in Lagos specializing in importing generic medical supplies—gloves, syringes, and diagnostic kits. After sanctions against certain pharmaceutical intermediaries, the SME’s bank blocks payment transfers to suppliers in India, citing compliance concerns. The firm, with no access to alternative financing, collapses within months. Hospitals reliant on its supplies face shortages, directly impacting patient care.

Here, the “banking freeze” is not abstract policy—it becomes a public health crisis. The financial severance transforms a commercial barrier into a humanitarian emergency.

3.7.2 Agricultural Exporters Strangled

A cocoa cooperative in Côte d’Ivoire, comprised of hundreds of smallholder farmers, loses access to trade finance after its partner bank severs ties with a European correspondent. Without credit letters, international buyers withdraw, forcing the cooperative to sell at deeply discounted prices to middlemen. Farmers’ incomes collapse, and generational poverty deepens.

This illustrates the cruel irony: sanctions meant to punish elites often punish the powerless most severely—the small farmer, the shopkeeper, the young entrepreneur.

3.8 Historical Progression: From Targeted Sanctions to Structural Damage

The Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law (2024) reminds us that sanctions historically began as narrowly tailored tools—aimed at military regimes or arms embargoes. Over decades, however, they expanded into financialized instruments, weaponizing access to banking systems as the most efficient lever of pressure.

The shift produced unintended consequences. Whereas embargoes of the 1980s could be circumvented through third-country trade, today’s banking freezes are harder to evade because nearly all global finance intersects with U.S. or European institutions. SMEs in Africa—lacking offshore accounts or complex financial engineering—are caught in the crossfire.

Thus, the very evolution of sanctions as instruments of power has created structural vulnerabilities in the Global South, magnifying dependency while eroding resilience.

3.9 The Human Face of Banking Freezes

Statistics tell only part of the story. To grasp the devastation, one must consider the lived experiences of African entrepreneurs.

• A Kenyan fintech startup founder described how his U.S.-based investors withdrew after compliance delays turned a three-day fund transfer into a three-month ordeal. The startup folded, and with it the jobs of thirty engineers.
• A Ghanaian SME owner importing solar panels reported paying 30% more after being forced into informal markets when his bank refused to process payments tied, however tenuously, to Chinese suppliers targeted by secondary sanctions.
• In Uganda, a women-led cooperative producing shea butter for export was cut off from its European buyer when their bank refused to issue letters of credit. The cooperative disbanded, its members returning to subsistence farming.

Each story underscores the same truth: the banking freeze transforms ambition into despair, innovation into insolvency, and opportunity into collapse.

3.10 Compliance as a Weapon

One of the least-discussed aspects of sanctions is how compliance burdens themselves become weapons. The SpringerLink (2024) study shows that even when sanctions technically allow humanitarian or small-business exemptions, compliance costs and risks push banks to shut down entire categories of transactions.

The result is a kind of self-imposed financial apartheid, where SMEs in Africa are deemed too risky to serve. The mere perception of exposure to sanctions is enough to starve them of credit. Banks survive by cutting ties; SMEs perish by being cut off.

3.11 Toward a Recognition of Collateral Damage

While Western policymakers often tout sanctions as “smart” and “targeted,” the evidence demonstrates otherwise. By undermining African banking systems, sanctions inflict disproportionate harm on SMEs—the very engines of employment, innovation, and poverty reduction.

Even the Policy Center for the New South (2023) emphasized that the collateral damage to SMEs undermines development gains, fuels unemployment, and destabilizes communities—creating long-term vulnerabilities far outweighing the supposed leverage gained against sanctioned states.

Sanctions thus operate as a paradox: while intended to constrain authoritarian regimes, they often strengthen elite control (who find ways to bypass restrictions) while crippling ordinary citizens and entrepreneurs.

3.12 Conclusion: SMEs as Casualties of Financial Warfare

The banking freeze effect on African SMEs reveals sanctions for what they truly are: a blunt instrument disguised as precision weaponry. By weaponizing global finance, sanctions choke the arteries of African economies at their most vulnerable points—small businesses that cannot hedge risks, diversify access, or lobby for exemptions.

The long-term consequences are profound. When SMEs collapse, entire communities lose jobs, services, and futures. When banks retreat into over-compliance, financial exclusion expands. And when currencies collapse under pressure, the poorest bear the highest inflationary burden.

To ignore these realities is to perpetuate a fiction: that sanctions are neat, surgical tools of diplomacy. In reality, they are silent sieges—transforming banks into battlefields, SMEs into collateral damage, and economies into hostage theatres.

For Africa, the path forward requires not only calling out these injustices on global platforms but also building regional financial resilience: strengthening intra-African trade settlements, diversifying away from single-currency dependence, and investing in indigenous financial technologies that reduce reliance on sanction-prone networks.

Until then, every new sanctions list in Washington or Brussels will echo across African markets—not as a policy debate, but as shuttered shops, unpaid wages, and broken dreams.

Part 4: Case Study: A Nation’s Currency Collapse (Sanctions-Induced)

When sanctions target financial arteries, the first organ to fail is the national currency. Exchange rates become weapons, inflation mutates into famine, and sovereignty shrinks to a shadow cast by foreign banks.

4.1 Introduction: Currency as Collateral

The collapse of a nation’s currency under sanctions is never merely an economic event. It is a political statement, a humanitarian tragedy, and a demonstration of the asymmetry between the sanctioning powers and the sanctioned state. When the United States or its allies pull the lever of financial exclusion, the immediate consequence is a severed lifeline to foreign exchange markets. Without access to dollars or euros, a sanctioned country’s currency loses credibility overnight. Importers panic, exporters hoard, and the fragile balance between supply and demand disintegrates.

The story is not only about the elites targeted in policy documents; it is about the baker who cannot price bread, the pharmacist who cannot import drugs, and the entrepreneur who cannot secure a loan without collateral denominated in foreign currency.

4.2 Sanctions as a Currency Weapon

Özdamar (2021) reminds us that sanctions have contradictory impacts, sometimes hurting adversaries but also reshaping unexpected partnerships in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa. Still, one constant emerges: when sanctions undermine currency stability, no sector escapes the fallout. Exchange rate volatility drives inflation, erodes savings, and forces governments to adopt desperate stopgap measures like rationing or dual-currency systems.

This is why scholars such as Itskhoki & Ribakova (2024) argue that sanctions should be understood not simply as trade restrictions but as instruments of financial warfare. The deliberate blocking of currency convertibility is equivalent to cutting off oxygen from an economy: the nation may stagger on, but every movement is strained, survival uncertain.

4.3 The Theoretical Blueprint of Collapse

According to the International Studies Review (Özdamar, 2021), the mechanics of currency collapse under sanctions can be traced through three stages:

1. Liquidity Crunch – When sanctions block access to international banking, central banks can no longer provide foreign reserves to stabilize exchange rates. The currency loses its anchor.
2. Confidence Shock – Citizens and businesses, anticipating further depreciation, abandon the local currency for dollars, euros, or even barter systems. This “flight to safety” accelerates collapse.
3. Inflationary Spiral – As imports become more expensive and currency credibility evaporates, inflation surges. In severe cases, hyperinflation transforms money itself into useless paper.

This blueprint repeats across geographies: Zimbabwe in the 2000s, Iran after 2012, Venezuela in the late 2010s, and more recently, Russia after 2022 sanctions. Each story differs in context, but the mechanism is eerily similar.

4.4 African Exposure to Sanction Spillovers

Though not always the primary targets, African economies frequently inherit the shockwaves of sanctions applied elsewhere. For instance, Özdamar (2021) shows how sanctions on Russia disrupted its trade and financial ties with Sub-Saharan Africa. Many African states that had relied on Russian currency swaps or bank lines for trade suddenly faced tighter credit conditions.

Take Angola and Nigeria, both reliant on dollar-based oil sales. When sanctions restricted Russia’s access to dollar-clearing systems, traders rerouted transactions, increasing volatility in global currency markets. This volatility filtered into African currencies, which depreciated sharply, compounding inflationary pressures at home.

In essence, even when Africa is not the sanctioned entity, its currencies become collateral damage. This exposes the deeper vulnerability: African currencies lack insulation from shocks in the global sanctions regime.

4.5 Case Illustration: A Fictionalized Composite Nation

To illustrate the anatomy of sanctions-induced collapse in an African setting, let us construct a composite case study—“Republic X.”

• Republic X is a mid-sized African country, heavily reliant on imports for food and medicine, with a currency partially stabilized by dollar reserves.
• Following allegations of human rights violations, the U.S. Treasury designates Republic X’s political elite under sanctions. At first, the measures are “targeted.” But almost immediately, correspondent banks cut ties, fearing secondary sanctions.
• Republic X’s central bank loses access to dollars. Importers scramble to source forex on the black market, where rates double within weeks.
• Citizens, fearing inflation, dump the local currency. Shop shelves empty. Within months, Republic X’s currency has lost 80% of its value, annual inflation reaches 300%, and salaries shrink to irrelevance.

This fictional example is a synthesis of real-world patterns seen in Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Iran—each demonstrating how quickly sanctions aimed at elites metastasize into currency collapse that immiserates millions.

4.6 The Humanitarian Fallout

Currency collapse under sanctions is not simply economic—it is humanitarian. Itskhoki & Ribakova (2024) emphasize that sanctions-induced financial shocks have a multiplier effect on the poorest.

• Healthcare: When the currency collapses, importing essential drugs becomes impossible. Pharmacies charge in dollars, out of reach for ordinary citizens.
• Education: Tuition fees for international curricula, often denominated in foreign currencies, soar beyond affordability. Families withdraw children from school.
• Food Security: Currency depreciation inflates the cost of imported food staples. Bread, rice, and cooking oil become luxuries.

This is why economists caution against treating currency collapse as a side effect. It is, in fact, the sharp edge of sanctions—the mechanism by which societies are pushed toward desperation.

4.7 A Double-Edged Sword: Contradictory Impacts

Interestingly, Özdamar (2021) also notes the contradictory outcomes of sanctions. In some cases, collapsing currencies create new alliances. For example, when Russia faced Western sanctions, it deepened ties with African states, offering barter trade or alternative payment systems. While this temporarily cushioned currency collapse in Russia, African partners often absorbed volatility as their own currencies became entangled in unstable arrangements.

Thus, while sanctions destabilize one nation, they also destabilize the currency credibility of its partners. The contagion spreads invisibly, through financial networks, until even non-sanctioned states find their currencies wobbling under external pressure.

4.8 Conclusion

The case of sanctions-induced currency collapse illustrates the profound power imbalance embedded in the global financial order. For African nations, the lesson is stark: as long as their currencies remain tethered to external reserve systems and dollar-denominated trade, they remain vulnerable to geopolitical decisions made oceans away.

Currency collapse under sanctions is not merely the failure of an economy. It is the erosion of sovereignty, the pauperization of citizens, and the silent victory of financial warfare.

 

4. Case Study

4.9 Russia–Africa Sanctions Nexus

When the West unleashed sweeping sanctions on Russia in 2022 and expanded them in subsequent years, the immediate fallout was not limited to Moscow. Africa—long entangled in Russia’s commodity, arms, and banking networks—felt the ripple effects almost instantly.

Özdamar’s 2025 IFRI Memo underscores this paradox: sanctions intended to isolate Russia also unsettled its economic relations with Sub-Saharan Africa (Özdamar, 2025a). Contracts for arms purchases stalled, fertilizer shipments were disrupted, and, most crucially, currency arrangements through Russian financial intermediaries collapsed.

African importers who had negotiated ruble- or euro-based payments found themselves stranded when those currencies could no longer move freely through global clearinghouses. Their recourse was the U.S. dollar—ironically the very instrument sanctions had weaponized. But dollars were scarce, black-market rates soared, and African currencies suffered new downward pressures.

This highlights a painful truth: sanctions rarely remain within their intended geography. Financial exclusion is contagious, leaping borders, weakening currencies, and punishing those far removed from the sanctioned elites.

4.10 Lessons from Iran and Venezuela

The experiences of Iran and Venezuela offer sobering parallels. In Iran, exclusion from the SWIFT system after 2012 turned the rial into a shadow of its former self. Inflation surged beyond 40%, and the government was forced into barter deals—oil for food, oil for gold. Citizens carried cash in suitcases; savings evaporated in months.

In Venezuela, sanctions combined with mismanagement to devastate the bolívar. Hyperinflation peaked at 10 million percent in 2019. Ordinary workers were paid in stacks of near-worthless notes, while elites and connected actors survived by transacting in dollars and cryptocurrencies.

These cautionary tales echo across Africa. They warn that once sanctions erode confidence in a currency, recovery is extraordinarily difficult. As Özdamar’s International Studies Review article stresses, sanctions-induced currency collapses tend to entrench inequality, privileging those with access to foreign exchange while impoverishing the majority (Özdamar, 2021b).

4.11 Zimbabwe: The African Precedent

Africa does not need to look abroad for examples of currency collapse—it has its own cautionary precedent in Zimbabwe. Although not strictly sanctions-driven, Zimbabwe’s collapse in the 2000s was exacerbated by Western sanctions targeting its leadership. The Zimbabwean dollar entered a death spiral, culminating in the surreal imagery of 100 trillion-dollar notes being used for bread.

The structural similarities to sanctions-driven collapses are instructive: limited access to foreign currency, collapsing investor confidence, and an inflationary spiral feeding on itself. Zimbabwe demonstrates how quickly a currency can lose meaning—and how difficult it is to restore faith once it has been shattered.

4.12 Brookings: Theory Into Practice

Itskhoki and Ribakova’s 2024 Brookings Paper dissects the economics of sanctions with precision. They argue that sanctions operate by creating dual disequilibria:

1. External disequilibrium — cutting off a country’s access to foreign reserves and international clearing systems.
2. Internal disequilibrium — eroding public confidence, triggering capital flight, hoarding, and inflation.

When these two disequilibria reinforce each other, the currency collapse becomes unstoppable. Policymakers may attempt fixes—capital controls, artificial exchange rates, or dollarization—but these rarely succeed without restoring external financial access.

For African states tied to global reserve systems, the implication is sobering: once sanctions sever access, even the most disciplined domestic policy cannot easily rescue the currency.

4.13 Human Stories Behind the Collapse

Statistics—depreciation rates, inflation percentages—cannot fully capture the devastation of currency collapse. The truer story lies in lived experience:

• The mother in Lagos who can no longer afford imported insulin for her diabetic child.
• The farmer in Nairobi who sells produce at dawn, only to find the money worthless by dusk.
• The student in Accra who dreams of studying abroad but watches tuition fees, denominated in dollars, slip further from reach each day.

Sanctions do not simply punish regimes; they reorder the lives of ordinary people, pushing survival into the black market, dignity into scarcity, and futures into uncertainty.

4.14 African Strategies of Resilience

Despite the bleakness, African states are not without options. The experience of sanctions-induced collapses elsewhere suggests potential paths of resilience:

1. Diversification of Trade Currencies – Building alternatives to dollar dependence, such as using regional currencies or exploring digital currency swaps.
2. Regional Payment Systems – Expanding initiatives like the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to reduce exposure to external clearinghouses.
3. Sovereign Wealth Buffers – Strengthening reserves during boom years to cushion shocks during sanctions or external crises.
4. Policy Transparency – Communicating clearly with citizens to maintain confidence and discourage panic-driven currency dumping.

These are not foolproof shields. But they demonstrate that Africa’s vulnerability is not destiny; it is a structural condition that can be gradually reformed.

4.15 Towards a Multipolar Financial Order

Perhaps the most significant long-term implication of sanctions-induced currency collapse is the acceleration of a multipolar financial order. As sanctions proliferate, more states seek to de-dollarize, experiment with alternative payment systems, or align with non-Western financial blocs.

For Africa, this creates both opportunities and risks. Opportunities lie in forging new alignments—whether with BRICS, through digital currencies, or in regional trade. Risks arise if such alternatives merely replicate dependence under new masters.

Yet, the underlying truth remains: the weaponization of sanctions ensures that the global financial order will not remain static. Africa must prepare to navigate—and shape—this turbulence.

4.16 Conclusion

Currency collapse is the silent explosion of sanctions. No buildings fall, no soldiers fire, yet an entire nation’s economic foundations disintegrate. The evidence from Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and across Africa confirms the pattern: once sanctions target financial arteries, the national currency withers, and with it the purchasing power, dignity, and survival of millions.

Sanctions-induced collapse is not collateral damage—it is the intended leverage. But for Africa, the challenge is not merely to endure these storms; it is to redesign systems that reduce vulnerability, strengthen resilience, and reclaim sovereignty over currency and commerce.

Only then can African nations shield themselves from being collateral in someone else’s geopolitical war.

 

Part 5: The Impact on Healthcare and Imports

When borders close, medicine becomes contraband.

 

5.1 Introduction: When Sanctions Enter the Hospital

Economic sanctions are often described as “bloodless weapons,” yet nowhere are their hidden casualties more visible than in the wards of Africa’s hospitals and the corridors of its pharmacies. Unlike bombs, sanctions rarely produce immediate rubble or smoking ruins; instead, they grind silently into the foundations of public health, suffocating supply chains, shrinking budgets, and leaving millions of ordinary citizens to pay the ultimate price. The collapse of import networks—whether for medicines, vaccines, or even basic medical equipment—means that the theatre of war is not the battlefield but the maternity ward, the dialysis unit, and the rural clinic.

In theory, most sanction regimes claim to exempt “humanitarian goods,” but in practice, the financial and logistical chokeholds they impose make these exemptions meaningless. Bank freezes halt payments to foreign suppliers, shipping lines refuse to dock for fear of secondary sanctions, and insurance companies quietly pull coverage. As a result, the promise that “humanitarian imports are untouched” often becomes little more than a diplomatic fiction.

For African nations, where health systems are already strained by rapid population growth and limited resources, the imposition of sanctions is akin to cutting off oxygen to a patient already on life support. It is not only the sick who suffer but also entire generations denied the right to adequate healthcare—a fundamental human entitlement.

5.2 Direct Health Impacts: Medicines, Vaccines, and Essential Equipment

The most immediate and visible impact of sanctions on healthcare is the shortage of medicines and essential medical supplies. Sanctions alter procurement processes at their root, restricting access to foreign pharmaceuticals, laboratory reagents, and life-saving equipment. For example, restrictions on financial transactions force African governments and hospitals to use informal or secondary channels, often at inflated prices, reducing the quantity of drugs available for distribution.

Yazdi-Feyzabadi et al. (2024) demonstrate that sanctions have both direct and indirect health effects, from immediate medicine shortages to long-term deterioration of healthcare infrastructure. Direct effects include the scarcity of antiretroviral drugs for HIV patients, chemotherapy agents for cancer treatment, and vaccines for preventable diseases. These shortages are not only inconvenient—they are lethal, translating into higher mortality rates, increased complications, and irreversible public health setbacks.

In countries heavily reliant on imports for specialized treatments—dialysis machines, MRI scanners, ventilators—the consequences are catastrophic. Without replacement parts or new procurement, hospitals are forced to ration care or revert to outdated methods. In effect, sanctions weaponize scarcity, making access to medicine a privilege instead of a right.

Vaccination programs also become collateral damage. With global suppliers reluctant to navigate the legal and bureaucratic minefields created by sanctions, vaccine deliveries are delayed or canceled altogether. The result is a widening of immunity gaps, particularly among children. Diseases that had once been on the path to eradication—such as measles or polio—suddenly resurface in communities left unprotected. This regression undermines decades of progress in global health.

5.3 Indirect Health Impacts: Maternal and Child Mortality

If the direct effects of sanctions are tragic, their indirect consequences are often even more devastating. Healthcare is not merely about pills and machines; it is about the ability of a system to sustain life over the long term. Sanctions erode this capacity in subtle but lethal ways—by cutting budgets, discouraging investment, and forcing skilled professionals to emigrate in search of more stable conditions.

One of the starkest indirect effects is the rise in maternal and child mortality. Gibson (2025), in The Lancet Global Health, documents how sanctions that limit aid and medical imports result in measurable increases in deaths among mothers and children. Prenatal care is disrupted by shortages of basic supplies such as sterile gloves, ultrasound gel, and essential drugs like oxytocin. Meanwhile, blocked imports of nutritional supplements and vaccines leave newborns and infants dangerously exposed.

In African settings, where maternal mortality rates are already among the highest in the world, sanctions magnify vulnerabilities. A mother denied access to an emergency C-section due to the absence of anesthesia drugs is not a statistic; she is the unseen casualty of foreign policy decisions made thousands of miles away. Similarly, infants dying of preventable infections due to vaccine delays are victims of geopolitical chess games in which their lives weigh less than diplomatic leverage.

The ripple effects extend to public health programs. Family planning initiatives falter when contraceptives are unavailable; HIV/AIDS prevention stalls when testing kits and antiretrovirals cannot be procured. This collapse is rarely acknowledged in official sanction impact assessments, yet it represents the true human cost of economic restrictions.

5.4 Imports and Blocked Supply Chains

Sanctions are not merely financial penalties; they are logistical blockades. Even when humanitarian exemptions exist, the practical mechanics of global trade often nullify them. Banks over-comply with restrictions, refusing to process payments for goods destined for sanctioned countries, fearing reputational risks or fines. Shipping companies, wary of secondary sanctions, avoid ports associated with sanctioned regimes altogether. Insurance firms, whose coverage is critical for maritime trade, quietly withdraw their services.

The result is a de facto embargo on healthcare-related imports, regardless of whether they are technically exempt. Yazdi-Feyzabadi et al. (2024) show that these barriers create spiraling costs for medical supplies, as African governments are forced to rely on black markets or middlemen who demand exorbitant fees.

Consider the case of diagnostic equipment: even when suppliers are willing to sell, the absence of financial clearing mechanisms forces buyers into barter arrangements or cryptocurrency transactions, both of which are unreliable for national-scale procurement. The collapse of formal import routes drives up prices, reduces supply, and introduces counterfeit or substandard products into the market—further endangering patients.

Food and fuel imports are also entangled in these dynamics. Hospitals cannot function without reliable electricity for surgical theaters or cold storage for vaccines. When sanctions disrupt fuel imports, power outages become routine, jeopardizing patient care. Likewise, when food imports are restricted, malnutrition rates rise, weakening populations and making them more susceptible to disease.

The human consequences of these logistical blockades are often invisible in sanction debates, overshadowed by geopolitical rhetoric. Yet for African SMEs importing medicines, or for rural clinics awaiting vaccine shipments, the impact is devastatingly clear. Sanctions do not stop at government offices; they reach into pharmacies, hospital wards, and ultimately, the lives of ordinary people.

5.5 Sanctions as a Violation of the Right to Health

The right to health is enshrined in multiple international covenants, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Yet sanctions, in practice, often transform this right into an empty promise. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has repeatedly warned that unilateral sanctions undermine access to health services, medicines, and humanitarian aid, thereby amounting to structural violations of human rights (OHCHR & Special Procedures, 2025).

The ethical contradiction is glaring. States imposing sanctions frequently proclaim their commitment to human rights, while their policies directly impede a population’s access to essential health care. The humanitarian exemptions cited in sanction documents often prove illusory, creating what human rights lawyers call the “compliance paradox.” Banks, shippers, and suppliers avoid sanctioned markets altogether, rendering exemptions meaningless.

For African nations, this translates into systemic denial of basic care. The principle of health as a universal right collapses under the weight of geopolitical maneuvering. When children die for lack of polio vaccines, or when hospitals close intensive care units because ventilators cannot be imported, the gap between international law and international practice becomes impossible to ignore.

5.6 African Case Studies: The Silent Wards

To illustrate the human cost, it is necessary to descend from the high language of policy into the silent wards of African hospitals. Consider a West African nation facing sanctions not directly for health-related issues but for alleged governance failures. Despite exemptions, pharmaceutical imports fall by more than 60%. Cancer patients who once received chemotherapy cycles suddenly find themselves rationed to half-doses. HIV/AIDS programs stall as supplies of antiretrovirals dry up.

Maternal health wards offer another tragic window. With imports of anesthetics blocked, obstetricians revert to outdated practices or delay emergency surgeries. Mortality rates rise, not because of medical incompetence, but because the tools of survival have been sanctioned out of reach.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the healthcare sector also collapse under the weight of these restrictions. Local distributors who once imported diagnostic kits or generic drugs are driven into bankruptcy. The result is a hollowing out of national health systems, as both public and private actors lose the ability to provide care.

These local stories rarely make it into the policy debates of Washington or Brussels. Yet they are the true battlegrounds where sanctions write their human toll.

5.7 Global Comparisons: Lessons from Iran, Cuba, and Beyond

Although this exposé focuses on Africa, the continent’s experience with sanctions is not unique. Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba provide global case studies demonstrating the predictable health consequences of broad economic restrictions.

In Iran, sanctions triggered shortages of chemotherapy drugs and blood-clotting factors, despite supposed humanitarian exemptions. In Cuba, decades of sanctions constrained access to medical technology and created chronic shortages in hospitals. Venezuela’s economic collapse, amplified by sanctions, saw maternal mortality soar and diseases like malaria re-emerge at scale.

These global parallels underline a consistent truth: sanctions rarely achieve their stated political objectives, yet they consistently devastate healthcare systems. Yazdi-Feyzabadi et al. (2024) emphasize that the indirect effects—emigration of medical professionals, degradation of infrastructure, collapse of preventative programs—often dwarf the direct shortages of drugs and supplies.

For African policymakers, the lesson is clear: reliance on global supply chains in a world prone to sanctions makes health systems inherently vulnerable. Building resilient, local pharmaceutical production and diversifying trade partners are not luxuries but necessities for survival in an era of weaponized economics.

5.8 Conclusion: The Silent Weapon in the War of Sanctions

The rhetoric of sanctions is always couched in terms of diplomacy and deterrence. Officials speak of “pressuring regimes,” “modifying behavior,” or “enforcing accountability.” Rarely do they acknowledge that the true frontlines are neonatal wards, oncology clinics, and rural vaccination programs.

Evidence from Africa and beyond reveals that sanctions operate as silent weapons of war against healthcare systems. They block imports of life-saving medicines, paralyze procurement of medical equipment, and drive healthcare SMEs into bankruptcy. They raise maternal and child mortality rates, reverse decades of progress against preventable diseases, and institutionalize health inequality on a global scale (Gibson, 2025; Yazdi-Feyzabadi et al., 2024).

From a human rights perspective, sanctions amount to collective punishment. They punish populations for the political decisions of their leaders, in violation of the principle that no civilian should be denied fundamental rights because of geopolitical disputes (OHCHR & Special Procedures, 2025).

The African experience demonstrates both the fragility and resilience of health systems under siege. Fragility, because the dependence on imports renders countries vulnerable to external pressures. Resilience, because despite these pressures, health workers and communities often find innovative ways to cope—whether through local production of generic drugs, cross-border smuggling of vaccines, or community-based healthcare initiatives.

Yet resilience is not enough. To safeguard healthcare against sanctions, African nations must invest in regional pharmaceutical hubs, develop continental insurance mechanisms to underwrite trade, and push for global reform of sanction regimes. International law must evolve to make the right to health non-negotiable, even in the context of economic warfare.

In the end, the silent victims of sanctions are not governments but patients. The measure of any policy is not its rhetoric but its human impact. By that standard, sanctions on African nations—regardless of their geopolitical justifications—have failed the test of justice.

 

Part 6: How Sanctions Reshape Trade Routes

When sanctions close doors, commerce does not stop; it reroutes, reshapes, and reinvents itself—often at devastating costs to African economies.

6.1 The Sanction as a Trade Disruptor

Sanctions are rarely discussed in terms of logistics, yet their most visible impact is geographic. When a nation is cut off from mainstream financial systems and major trade corridors, the effect is not simply economic—it is spatial. Entire trade routes are redrawn in response to sanction regimes, altering shipping flows, raising costs, and eroding competitive advantage.

For African nations, the geography of trade is already complex. Landlocked economies depend on corridors through neighboring states; coastal states rely on vulnerable shipping lanes dominated by global giants. When sanctions strike, these fragile routes become unstable. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA, 2025) highlights how sanctions against South Africa in recent years drove shippers toward less efficient, longer alternative routes, increasing costs and making traditional shipping lanes less viable.

The result is not only higher prices for consumers but also deep structural distortions. Goods that once flowed through established maritime arteries must now take circuitous paths, undermining predictability and choking off regional trade integration.

6.2 Africa’s Position in a Fragmenting Global Trade Map

Sanctions-driven trade disruptions must also be seen in the broader context of global fragmentation. The McKinsey Global Institute (2024) describes how geopolitical rivalries and sanction regimes increasingly redraw the “geometry of global trade.” Instead of a seamless globalized system, trade now clusters into blocs—Western-aligned, China-Russia-aligned, and non-aligned networks where African economies often struggle to find balance.

This fragmentation hits African exporters and importers particularly hard. For instance, when Western sanctions limit transactions with Russia, African countries dependent on Russian fertilizers are forced to reroute through Asian intermediaries, adding time and cost. Conversely, African oil exporters facing Western restrictions may pivot to Asian markets, but lack of direct shipping capacity inflates transport costs.

Sanctions thus impose a “geopolitical tax” on African trade. They force traders into second-best routes, deepen dependency on middlemen, and exacerbate the already-high cost of doing business across the continent.

 

6.3 The Banking and Shipping Nexus

Trade routes are not only geographical; they are also financial. When sanctions block access to dollar-clearing systems or SWIFT transactions, the impact ripples directly into shipping. African SMEs and larger exporters find themselves unable to insure cargo, book slots on Western-dominated shipping lines, or settle payments in standard currencies.

This financial paralysis has real-world geographic consequences:

• Ships avoid sanctioned ports, forcing rerouting to less equipped harbors.
• Insurance premiums skyrocket, making some routes prohibitively expensive.
• Cargo transits through neutral states, adding logistical steps and delays.

In practice, this turns what was once a three-day maritime route into a two-week odyssey, with costs rising exponentially. The inefficiencies are borne not by the sanctioning powers but by African producers and consumers, who face price spikes in everything from wheat to medical equipment.

6.4 Historical Echoes: From Apartheid South Africa to Modern Sanctions

The idea of sanctions reshaping African trade is not new. During the apartheid era, international sanctions forced South Africa into costly rerouting strategies, relying on shadow shipping networks and alternative financing mechanisms. The echoes of those years resonate today, as sanctions again target South Africa, forcing similar distortions (UN/DESA, 2025).

But unlike the apartheid era, today’s trade networks are more interconnected and digitized. This means that disruptions are faster, wider, and more systemic. A sanction on one node can ripple through entire supply chains, magnifying costs across industries and borders.

For example, sanctions that restrict one country’s ability to export minerals do not only harm that country’s GDP; they disrupt global supply chains for smartphones, electric vehicles, and industrial machinery. In turn, African nations reliant on these supply chains for jobs and growth face indirect punishment.

6.5 Case Studies: Fertilizers, Oil, and Food

The fertilizer trade is one of the most striking examples of sanctions-induced rerouting. Africa is heavily dependent on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers to sustain its agricultural sector. When sanctions cut off direct shipments, importers in Africa were forced to secure fertilizers through intermediaries in Asia and the Middle East. What once was a straightforward transaction became a logistical maze: ships docking in neutral ports, goods repackaged and relabeled, and new trade documentation created to bypass sanction scrutiny.

This not only raised costs by 20–40 percent but also caused delays at the peak of planting seasons, threatening food security across sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers, who already operate on razor-thin margins, were hit hardest.

Oil markets provide another telling case. When Western sanctions curbed exports from African oil producers tied to Russian refiners or markets, these producers shifted toward Asian buyers. Yet because direct maritime and financial channels were limited, crude often traveled circuitous routes through intermediary hubs like Singapore or Malaysia. The result: reduced profit margins, logistical bottlenecks, and higher shipping insurance costs.

Food imports have also suffered. Wheat from sanctioned suppliers had to be rerouted through third countries, doubling shipping times and raising bread prices in African cities. What is often framed as “targeted sanctions” ends up striking the urban poor in Lagos, Nairobi, and Kinshasa.

6.6 The Rise of Informal and Black-Market Trade Routes

Whenever formal trade collapses, shadow economies rise. Sanctions have birthed an ecosystem of black-market trade routes across Africa. From informal trucking corridors linking sanctioned states to their neighbors, to shadow shipping companies operating under flags of convenience, commerce adapts to survive.

But this adaptation comes at a cost. Informal trade routes rarely offer consumer protections, quality guarantees, or fair prices. Goods often become scarce, adulterated, or exorbitantly priced. Worse still, black-market routes enrich smuggling networks, corrupt officials, and transnational criminal organizations.

The danger for African economies is that once informal routes take root, they are hard to dismantle. Even if sanctions are lifted, the underground trade networks remain, siphoning revenue from governments and embedding corruption into state systems.

6.7 Policy Responses by African Governments

African governments have attempted various responses to mitigate the trade distortions caused by sanctions. Some have pursued diplomatic channels, lobbying sanctioning powers to create exemptions for essential goods such as fertilizers and medicines. Others have sought to strengthen regional integration through blocs like ECOWAS, SADC, and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), hoping to reduce dependency on extra-continental trade flows.

In some cases, governments have invested in alternative corridors, building new ports, roads, and railways to diversify trade options. Yet infrastructure alone cannot solve the deeper problem: Africa’s vulnerability stems from its limited bargaining power in a sanctions-dominated global order.

The most effective responses have come from multilateral efforts to negotiate humanitarian exemptions and carve-outs. However, even these are often slow, bureaucratic, and unevenly applied, leaving many African traders caught between compliance fears and survival imperatives.

6.8 Conclusion: Toward Resilient Trade Architectures

Sanctions have made one thing clear: Africa cannot afford to rely on a single set of trade corridors or financial systems. The cost of rerouting under duress is too high, both economically and socially.

Building resilience will require three shifts:

1. Diversification of Trade Partners
   African states must broaden their networks, engaging not only with traditional Western partners but also with Asia, Latin America, and intra-African trade.
2. Regional Self-Sufficiency
   Strengthening the AfCFTA, boosting agricultural self-reliance, and investing in continental supply chains will reduce exposure to global shocks.
3. Alternative Financial Channels
   Developing local currency settlements, regional payment systems, and non-dollar trade mechanisms will blunt the force of banking sanctions that paralyze trade routes.

In the end, sanctions reshape trade not only by closing routes but by teaching nations new lessons in resilience. Africa’s task is to convert the pain of rerouting into a blueprint for autonomy.

As McKinsey Global Institute (2024) observed, the new geometry of global trade is not set in stone; it is being redrawn in real time. Africa must seize this moment to inscribe itself onto the map not as a victim of sanctions but as a builder of alternative corridors that serve its own people first.

Read also: The Lost Science Of Ancient Healing

 

Part 7: The Role of Secondary Sanctions on Neighboring States

How punishment aimed at one nation silently punishes its neighbors, reshaping entire regions.

7.1 The Invisible Reach of Sanctions

Economic sanctions are often described as targeted tools—sharpened instruments of diplomacy designed to wound specific regimes or sectors without harming broader populations. In reality, however, sanctions behave more like shockwaves. They strike the intended target but ripple far beyond borders, destabilizing regional economies and straining diplomatic ties. These unintended effects are particularly severe for neighboring states, which may not be directly sanctioned yet find themselves collateral victims of financial isolation, blocked trade corridors, and political stigma (Chatham House, 2025).

The logic is simple but brutal. Borders in Africa are porous, economies are interlinked, and trade corridors rarely respect the artificial lines drawn on colonial maps. When sanctions cut a sanctioned nation off from global markets, the fallout spills instantly into the economies next door. Trucks halt at borders, ports choke on stranded goods, and small traders—who form the lifeblood of regional commerce—face ruin.

7.2 Secondary Sanctions: The Silent Hand of Enforcement

Beyond direct sanctions, the practice of secondary sanctions magnifies the burden. These measures target third-party countries, companies, or individuals who continue to engage with sanctioned states. Essentially, they force neighbors to choose between loyalty to their regional partners and access to the global financial system.

For African states, this is no choice at all. A landlocked country that relies on a sanctioned neighbor’s ports or pipelines suddenly finds itself trapped. Banks in a non-sanctioned country that process payments on behalf of the targeted nation risk losing access to international financial markets. Even humanitarian agencies attempting to deliver food and medicine hesitate, fearing that their operations might trigger penalties under secondary sanctions (Sage Journals, 2023).

This coercive spillover effect transforms sanctions into a weapon not just against the intended regime, but against entire regions whose only crime is proximity.

7.3 Sudan: A Case Study in Regional Pain

The long years of sanctions on Sudan illustrate the phenomenon vividly. Officially, sanctions were directed at Khartoum’s leadership, accused of harboring terrorism and committing atrocities. In practice, however, Sudan’s neighbors bore significant costs.

Countries like South Sudan, Chad, and Ethiopia, which depended on cross-border trade and remittance flows, found themselves ensnared. Goods that once flowed easily across borders slowed to a trickle. Informal markets adapted, but at a steep price: higher costs for consumers, reduced revenues for governments, and increased reliance on smuggling networks.

The Journal of Peace Research observed that Sudanese public suffering persisted long after some sanctions were formally lifted, in part because regional economies had already restructured around scarcity and informality (Sage Journals, 2023). Neighboring states paid a price not just in lost trade but in heightened insecurity, as smuggling routes overlapped with arms trafficking and insurgent networks.

7.4 The Banking Trap

One of the most devastating impacts of secondary sanctions is financial isolation. Even when trade routes remain physically open, banking channels are not. African banks in countries not under sanction often “de-risk”—cutting off any ties, however small, to avoid triggering secondary sanctions themselves.

This retreat paralyzes small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that rely on cross-border payments. For example, a textile exporter in Ethiopia who once shipped goods through Sudan suddenly finds invoices unpaid because her bank refuses to process transactions linked to Sudanese counterparts. A Ghanaian construction firm contracted in a sanctioned state sees its payments frozen mid-project.

Chatham House (2025) has highlighted how this climate of financial fear undermines entire regional blocs, eroding trust between states and leaving local businesses hostage to geopolitical rivalries.

7.5 Humanitarian Consequences in Neighboring States

Secondary sanctions do not simply choke banks and block goods—they ripple into the very core of human survival. When a sanctioned nation’s economy collapses, the spillover quickly overwhelms neighboring states that host refugees, share health systems, or depend on cross-border food supply chains.

For instance, during years of sanctions on Sudan, neighboring Chad and South Sudan saw waves of displaced families crossing borders in search of food, medicine, and basic security. Local clinics and schools—already underfunded—buckled under the strain. Humanitarian agencies operating in the region often faced near-impossible dilemmas: deliver aid that risked violating sanctions or withhold lifesaving supplies to remain compliant with international regulations.

Chatham House (2025) stresses that secondary sanctions, though rarely acknowledged in official rhetoric, create “a humanitarian chokehold” on populations in neighboring states. This means that while policymakers in Washington, Brussels, or London may frame sanctions as precise diplomatic tools, the lived experience in Africa is closer to collective punishment.

7.6 Diplomatic Tightropes: Balancing Global and Regional Interests

African governments caught in the web of secondary sanctions must navigate an impossible balancing act. On one side lies the need to maintain cordial relations with the sanctioned neighbor, often tied to shared culture, history, and critical infrastructure. On the other side lies the immense pressure to comply with Western powers who dominate the global financial system.

This tension has produced a paradoxical diplomacy. Publicly, African leaders may condemn sanctions as unjust and harmful to ordinary citizens. Privately, they instruct their central banks and commercial institutions to sever even the faintest ties with sanctioned nations. The result is a deep erosion of regional solidarity.

In the Horn of Africa, for example, Ethiopia has often had to walk this diplomatic tightrope. While sharing extensive economic and cultural links with Sudan, it has simultaneously curtailed financial transactions to avoid triggering secondary sanctions. This posture strains regional organizations like the African Union and IGAD, which aspire to collective approaches but are undermined by the asymmetry of global financial coercion.

7.7 Policy Responses: How Neighbors Adapt or Resist

Despite the suffocating reach of secondary sanctions, African neighbors have not remained passive. Some adopt creative adaptation strategies, while others quietly resist.

Adaptation often takes the form of informal economies. Traders reroute goods through clandestine channels, creating black markets that enrich middlemen while depriving states of tax revenues. Cross-border communities fall back on barter systems or cash economies, bypassing frozen banking channels. This adaptation ensures survival but fosters lawlessness and undermines long-term development.

Resistance, on the other hand, emerges in diplomatic forums. Regional blocs such as ECOWAS and SADC have periodically called for the reconsideration of broad sanctions regimes, emphasizing their disproportionate impact on uninvolved states. However, these calls often collide with the geopolitical interests of powerful sanctioning nations.

Scholars note that some African governments deliberately pursue “quiet defiance,” maintaining minimal humanitarian or trade contact with sanctioned states in ways that avoid global attention. This strategy preserves lifelines without provoking outright retaliation, but it also underscores the precariousness of sovereignty under global sanctions regimes (Sage Journals, 2023).

 

7.8 Conclusion: Collateral Damage or Strategic Leverage?

Secondary sanctions expose a hard truth about the global order: the pain of punishment rarely respects borders. They transform targeted economic weapons into regional crises, punishing innocent neighbors who never stood trial in the court of international diplomacy.

From Sudan’s sanctions era to current cases elsewhere in Africa, the pattern is clear. Banks retreat, trade collapses, refugees flee, and neighboring states—already fragile—are dragged into spirals of instability. Chatham House (2025) rightly observes that if sanctions are to remain part of the international toolkit, they must be recalibrated to prevent such disproportionate collateral damage.

The question, however, is whether this collateral damage is merely an accident—or whether it serves as deliberate leverage. By allowing secondary sanctions to pressure neighboring states, sanctioning powers amplify their reach, forcing entire regions to isolate the target. In this light, collateral damage becomes not just a side-effect but part of the strategy.

For Africa, the path forward lies in building financial and political resilience. Regional payment systems, stronger intra-African trade routes, and united diplomatic stances could blunt the sharp edges of secondary sanctions. Without such measures, African states will remain vulnerable to punishment not for their actions, but for their geography.

 

Part 8: Sanctions Evasion Tactics and Black Markets

How the shadows of global finance create survival routes for sanctioned states and lifelines for authoritarian regimes.

8.1 The Shadow Economy as Counter-Sanctions

Economic sanctions are often framed as the “clean weapon” of modern statecraft — bloodless tools that can cripple economies without the optics of war. Yet, history has shown that every sanction spawns its countermeasure, and every block creates its bypass. What emerges is not compliance, but adaptation: shadow markets, covert finance networks, and the normalization of evasion.

As Johnstone et al. (2025) observe in their work for the Hoover Institution, the Global Sanctions Database has repeatedly demonstrated how sanctioned states reconfigure their economies through black markets, clandestine banking, and proxy trade routes. The lesson is simple: sanctions intended to suffocate often end up fostering new, hidden circulatory systems that keep targeted regimes alive — and sometimes even more insulated.

8.2 Dubai: The Global Junction of Illicit Evasion

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in Dubai. Long celebrated as a hub for global finance and logistics, the city has also become a nucleus of sanctions evasion. Krylova (2023) documents how Dubai functions as a safe haven for covert gold trading, shell companies, and crypto-enabled evasion schemes that serve sanctioned actors from Africa, Russia, and beyond.

Gold, in particular, has become the perfect instrument for sanctions evasion: portable, easily laundered, and resistant to traceability. In Dubai’s bustling souks, tons of African gold — often mined under brutal conditions — are funneled into global markets, bypassing restrictions on sanctioned governments. Crypto adds a new dimension: transactions disappear into blockchain anonymity, while the emirate’s permissive regulatory environment allows such flows to move without serious oversight.

What sanctions choke in the open, Dubai’s shadows resuscitate.

8.3 Tax Havens: Sanctuaries for Sanctioned Wealth

A second layer of evasion resides offshore. Kavakli, Marcolongo, & Zambiasi (2023) show convincingly how tax havens provide shelter for sanctioned elites’ assets. From shell corporations in the British Virgin Islands to accounts in Swiss or Caribbean jurisdictions, sanctioned actors have long relied on secrecy havens to store wealth safely beyond the grasp of regulators.

This system thrives not only because of weak enforcement but also because powerful Western interests benefit from it. Lawyers, bankers, and corporate service firms in London, New York, and Zurich quietly profit from keeping sanctioned capital alive under new disguises. Thus, while policymakers in Washington and Brussels trumpet sanctions as hard-line tools, their own financial ecosystems serve as complicit enablers of the very actors they claim to isolate.

8.4 Military Goods and the Transshipment Maze

Even in industries supposedly tightly controlled — like arms — sanctioned states find loopholes. Scheckenhofer, Teti, & Wanner (2025) uncover how military goods, ostensibly restricted, flow across borders through “transshipment”: goods are exported legally to a third country, then quietly re-exported to the sanctioned state.

This is not a fringe tactic but a central mechanism of sanctions evasion. A jet engine sold legally to a company in Central Asia may end up powering sanctioned fighter aircraft. Communications equipment shipped to a Middle Eastern buyer may be redirected to a sanctioned intelligence agency. Each step is laundered through paperwork, creating the illusion of compliance while materially subverting it.

This web of transshipment illustrates the futility of sanctions when enforcement mechanisms remain paper-thin.

8.5 Crypto: The Digital Vein of Evasion

Finally, the digital revolution has opened a frontier that policymakers scarcely understand. Zola, Medina, & Orduna (2024) demonstrate how cryptocurrencies are increasingly used to bypass sanctions, enabling anonymous payments, asset transfers, and even large-scale funding of authoritarian regimes.

From North Korea’s reliance on crypto hacks to Iran’s use of Bitcoin mining, crypto ecosystems have provided sanctioned states with parallel financial infrastructures. What was once the domain of fringe libertarians is now a strategic weapon of sanctioned governments. Crypto, by design, thrives in stateless space — precisely where sanctions struggle to operate.

This is why the U.S. Treasury and EU regulators have begun tightening restrictions on crypto exchanges. Yet the very architecture of decentralized finance makes full control virtually impossible. Sanctions are premised on state control of flows; crypto is premised on its absence.

8.6 The Sanctions Paradox

Across all these tactics — Dubai’s gold, offshore havens, transshipment routes, and crypto — lies a common theme: sanctions produce the very shadows that sustain the regimes they aim to topple. They expand the global black market, enrich intermediaries, and empower authoritarian networks.

Far from being weakened, sanctioned states learn resilience. They become masters of adaptation, building economies optimized for survival in hostile terrain. What sanctions take away in formal legitimacy, black markets restore in hidden durability.

As Johnstone et al. (2025) argue, sanctions are less about strangling economies than about rearranging them. Targeted states learn to survive outside Western-dominated circuits of finance and trade. This survival, in turn, deepens the rift between the sanctioned and the sanctioner, creating long-term fractures in the global order.

8.7 Case Study: Iran and the Oil Shadow Market

No country illustrates sanctions evasion better than Iran. Crushed under decades of U.S. and EU sanctions, Iran has perfected the art of “ghost shipping.” Tankers carrying Iranian oil switch off their GPS transponders, conduct ship-to-ship transfers in international waters, and offload oil under false flags. These tactics allow Iran to continue exporting millions of barrels each day, often routed through intermediaries in Asia.

Dubai plays a critical role in this network, acting as a hub for front companies that disguise Iranian-origin goods. Combined with crypto payments and offshore accounts, Iran demonstrates how a supposedly isolated nation can still fund its state apparatus, sustain its military activities, and bypass the restrictions of the formal financial system.

The West claims sanctions as a triumph of pressure; in reality, they have fostered a robust shadow oil economy, enriching a cadre of brokers, smugglers, and complicit banks.

8.8 Russia: Sanctioned, Yet Thriving in Shadows

Russia’s experience since 2022 echoes this pattern on a larger scale. Swiftly cut off from Western finance and export markets after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was expected to collapse. Instead, it reoriented trade flows toward Asia, built massive black-market networks for sanctioned goods, and leaned on Dubai, Turkey, and Central Asia to reroute financial and technological supplies.

As Özdamar (2021) argues, sanctions rarely deliver intended political outcomes. For Russia, sanctions accelerated its pivot toward China, spurred domestic substitution industries, and encouraged tighter integration into non-Western trade blocs. The ruble may have destabilized, but Russia’s ability to evade sanctions through parallel markets has preserved its geopolitical posture.

Here again, the sanctions paradox emerges: the very tools meant to weaken Moscow are reshaping global finance to reduce Western leverage.

8.9 African States and the Sanctions Backwash

For African economies, sanctions on other nations often act as indirect punishment. Sudan, Zimbabwe, and smaller states dependent on Russian or Iranian trade find themselves cut off from vital goods, unable to access dollar-based systems, and forced into illicit channels.

As Chatham House (2025) and Sage Journals (2023) show, secondary sanctions and collateral enforcement measures frequently punish neighboring countries more harshly than the intended target. For example, Zimbabwe’s informal gold trade boomed as formal banking avenues closed; Sudan’s neighbors have absorbed illicit flows of weapons and smuggled goods.

For African SMEs, this backwash creates near-impossible conditions: they cannot secure international financing, cannot pay suppliers through formal channels, and must rely on costly informal routes. Sanctions intended for Moscow or Tehran ripple into Nairobi, Lagos, and Johannesburg — choking small enterprises that had no part in the politics that triggered them.

8.10 The Human Cost of Black Markets

While black markets sustain regimes, they destroy ordinary lives. Shadow economies thrive on exploitation: child labor in illicit gold mines, human trafficking networks used as payment enforcement, and unsafe working conditions in unregulated sectors.

Krylova (2023) notes that Dubai’s gold inflows often originate in African mines where environmental devastation and human rights abuses are rampant. By enabling sanctioned states to sell gold discreetly, the black-market system indirectly sustains cycles of forced labor and ecological destruction.

Similarly, crypto-based evasion schemes empower authoritarian regimes while exposing citizens to scams, hyperinflationary tokens, and untraceable losses. The global financial elite may debate sanctions theory in think tanks, but in practice, it is the vulnerable who bear the hidden costs.

8.11 Global Complicity in Evasion

The black-market networks that keep sanctioned states afloat do not exist in isolation. They are plugged into Western financial institutions, law firms, and political lobbying circuits.

Tax havens — largely Western constructs — are critical to storing sanctioned wealth. Commodity traders in Switzerland and Singapore knowingly purchase shadow oil. Luxury real estate in London and New York is funded by sanctioned oligarchs’ capital hidden in shell corporations.

Thus, the image of sanctions as a moral high ground collapses under scrutiny. The same global system that enforces sanctions profits from their evasion. The hypocrisy is not incidental; it is structural.

8.12 The Enforcement Mirage

Sanctions rely on enforcement to succeed. But enforcement is weak, fragmented, and riddled with loopholes.

• Crypto is decentralized.
• Shipping can be disguised with simple paperwork.
• Gold is fungible once refined.
• Tax havens operate beyond transparency standards.

Even when enforcement agencies like the U.S. Treasury seize assets or impose penalties, the costs are absorbed as “operating expenses” by evasion networks. For every sanctioned tanker detained, ten slip through. For every crypto wallet frozen, dozens multiply in new chains.

Sanctions, therefore, create an illusion of control while actual flows adapt and persist in shadows.

8.13 The Paradox of Sanctions

Ultimately, sanctions reveal a profound paradox. They are marketed as clean instruments of justice, yet they strengthen authoritarian regimes by forcing them to innovate, deepen their resilience, and expand illicit markets. They are intended to isolate, yet they globalize black markets. They are meant to punish elites, yet they devastate ordinary people while leaving the powerful largely unscathed.

As Johnstone et al. (2025) remind us, sanctions are less tools of economic pressure than catalysts for systemic transformation — transformations that erode Western dominance over global finance and empower alternative systems of trade.

Closing Reflection

Sanctions, in theory, are about justice. In practice, they are about shadows. Every blocked transaction spawns a hidden route; every embargo births a black-market substitute. What emerges is not compliance, but a parallel economy where power flows unimpeded, and where authoritarian regimes, shielded by evasion networks, remain firmly entrenched.

The world that sanctions build is not one of transparency and accountability — but of darkness, exploitation, and duplicity. Until this paradox is confronted, sanctions will remain less a tool of justice than a breeding ground for the very abuses they claim to fight.

 

 

Part 9: When Sanctions Fail to Change Regimes

The sanctions paradox: why regimes survive even as citizens suffer.

9.1 The Sanctions Paradox

For decades, sanctions have been marketed as the perfect middle ground between diplomacy and war — powerful enough to compel political change, yet bloodless enough to avoid military casualties. In theory, sanctions deprive authoritarian elites of resources, isolate them from global finance, and create internal pressure that forces concessions. In practice, however, the evidence tells a starkly different story: authoritarian regimes often endure, adapt, and in some cases even strengthen under sanctions.

Chatham House (2025) offers one of the most comprehensive assessments of this paradox, demonstrating how sanctions imposed on regimes such as China, Belarus, Myanmar, and Cuba have proven largely ineffective at forcing political reforms. Instead, they reveal what political scientist Daniel Drezner famously called the “sanctions paradox” — that sanctions rarely topple entrenched regimes but succeed in deepening authoritarian control by allowing rulers to weaponize the crisis to their advantage (Chatham House, 2025).

The underlying reason is structural: sanctions tend to inflict disproportionate costs on civilians rather than on the insulated elites they target. Leaders facing external pressure consolidate power, restrict civil liberties further, and strengthen state propaganda to portray themselves as defenders against foreign aggression. The end result is not democratization but retrenchment.

9.2 Venezuela: The Case of Entrenched Survival

One of the most telling contemporary examples is Venezuela. When Donald Trump’s administration reinstated and expanded sanctions against Nicolás Maduro in 2019, Washington’s explicit aim was to destabilize and ultimately remove the Venezuelan leader. By 2025, however, Maduro remains firmly in power, and Venezuela has plunged deeper into economic ruin.

Chatham House (2025) notes that sanctions contributed significantly to Venezuela’s economic collapse, pushing inflation into astronomical levels, devastating oil revenues, and crippling the country’s already fragile financial infrastructure. Yet Maduro used the sanctions as political ammunition, framing himself as the guardian of Venezuelan sovereignty against imperial aggression. Internationally, he pivoted to alternative alliances — including Russia, Iran, and China — while domestically, he tightened his grip over key institutions such as the judiciary, armed forces, and state-run enterprises.

The failure of sanctions in Venezuela illustrates the futility of economic coercion when applied against regimes with high coercive capacity and access to alternative networks of support. Instead of sparking regime change, sanctions exacerbated poverty and migration, further destabilizing the wider Latin American region. As Chatham House observes, sanctions have become less about strategic transformation and more about symbolic assertion of foreign policy resolve (Chatham House, 2025).

9.3 Syria: Sanctions That Strengthened the Regime

The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins (2025) makes an equally damning critique when examining Syria. Over a decade of sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union aimed to isolate Bashar al-Assad and hasten his removal. Yet sanctions failed to achieve either goal. Assad, bolstered by military support from Russia and Iran, remains entrenched.

Worse still, sanctions compounded humanitarian suffering. Jenkins points out that restrictions on imports, financial transfers, and reconstruction aid decimated Syria’s economy and created widespread shortages of essential goods. The result was not the weakening of Assad but the intensification of state dependency: ordinary Syrians were left vulnerable to scarcity while the regime controlled the distribution of remaining resources, strengthening its leverage over the population (The Guardian, 2025).

Here lies another irony of sanctions: by creating artificial scarcity, they inadvertently increase the centrality of the regime as gatekeeper, granting leaders even greater control over rationed resources and patronage networks. In Syria’s case, sanctions became a gift to Assad — reinforcing his propaganda narrative that Western powers sought to starve Syrians into submission.

9.4 Cuba, Belarus, and Myanmar: The Durability of Isolation

Cuba represents perhaps the longest-running case study of sanctions failure. For over 60 years, the United States maintained an economic embargo intended to topple the Castro regime and force democratic reforms. Instead, the embargo became a central feature of Cuban national identity, with successive leaders using U.S. hostility as political fuel to justify repression and centralize power. The embargo not only failed to bring democracy but also gave Havana a convenient scapegoat for its economic hardships (Chatham House, 2025).

Similarly, Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko has absorbed successive rounds of Western sanctions since 2020, when the regime brutally cracked down on protests following fraudulent elections. Yet Lukashenko remains in office, sustained by Moscow’s patronage and by his ability to control Belarusian security institutions. Sanctions, far from dislodging him, have entrenched his dependency on Russia while deepening authoritarian repression domestically.

Myanmar offers another cautionary tale. Western sanctions intensified after the military coup of February 2021, aimed at punishing generals and restoring democratic governance. However, the junta has not relented. Instead, sanctions accelerated the junta’s economic alignment with China and Russia while fueling a parallel war economy dominated by military conglomerates and illicit trade. The net result is a weakened civilian population and a junta more determined than ever to resist external pressure.

These cases collectively demonstrate what International Affairs (2024) described as the “paradox of economic sanctions against non-democratic regimes”: instead of fostering liberalization, sanctions strengthen authoritarian resilience by reinforcing siege mentalities, consolidating elite cohesion, and shifting dependency toward alternative allies.

9.5 Why Autocracies Consolidate Under Sanctions

The structural resilience of autocracies under sanctions is neither accidental nor mysterious. Several mechanisms explain why sanctions fail to deliver political change:

1. Elite Insulation:
   Authoritarian elites are adept at shielding themselves from economic pain. They retain privileged access to hard currency, foreign trade channels, and patronage networks while ordinary citizens absorb the brunt of shortages and inflation.
2. Propaganda and Nationalism:
   Sanctions provide ready-made propaganda for authoritarian leaders. By portraying themselves as victims of imperialist aggression, regimes rally nationalist sentiment and delegitimize internal dissent as treachery.
3. Resource Control:
   Sanctions create scarcity, which the regime can manipulate. By controlling access to fuel, food, and medicine, leaders bind citizens to the state for survival, strengthening authoritarian patronage.
4. Alternative Alliances:
   Globalization has rendered sanctions less effective by offering sanctioned regimes access to non-Western networks. From Russia and China to regional smuggling hubs, autocracies find lifelines that neutralize Western pressure.
5. Fragmented International Consensus:
   Sanctions work best when universally applied. Yet in an increasingly multipolar world, global unity is rare. Divisions between Western powers, emerging economies, and regional blocs undermine enforcement and offer regimes avenues of escape.

The New Yorker (2021) emphasized these dynamics when surveying historical cases. From Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, sanctions created immense civilian suffering but left ruling elites largely unscathed. Far from catalyzing reform, they entrenched authoritarian control, proving that the tools of economic warfare are blunt and often counterproductive.

9.6 Historical Lessons and Modern Implications

History provides sobering lessons. The 20th and early 21st centuries are littered with examples of sanctions imposed with high expectations only to yield disappointing results. As The New Yorker (2021) observed, sanctions inflicted visible economic harm — currency collapse, trade contraction, humanitarian crises — yet failed to translate these pressures into regime change.

One explanation lies in what political scientists call “authoritarian adaptation”. Sanctions are external shocks, but autocracies evolve by reorganizing domestic economies, exploiting illicit trade, and tightening coercive apparatuses. In essence, the more a regime is cornered, the more it invests in survival strategies.

The consequence for global governance is significant. If sanctions are repeatedly ineffective, they risk becoming performative — tools that allow sanctioning states to signal moral outrage without achieving strategic objectives. Chatham House (2025) underscores this point, warning that the overuse of sanctions risks eroding their credibility as a legitimate instrument of international statecraft.

9.7 Iran and the Endless Sanctions Cycle

Iran epitomizes the sanctions paradox in slow motion. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country has endured successive waves of U.S. and international sanctions targeting everything from its oil exports to financial institutions. Yet over four decades later, the Islamic Republic not only survives but has embedded defiance into its political identity.

The sanctions’ logic was clear: isolate Tehran economically, cripple its capacity to fund nuclear development and regional militancy, and thereby compel concessions. But as the International Affairs (2024) analysis suggests, authoritarian regimes like Iran adapt to sanctions by consolidating power structures and redirecting economic flows.

Iran’s ruling clerics turned sanctions into a narrative of national martyrdom, portraying themselves as defenders of Islamic sovereignty against Western imperialism. The hardship borne by ordinary Iranians became, in official discourse, the “sacrifice of resistance.” Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard Corps expanded its control over smuggling networks, illicit trade routes, and sanctioned industries — profiting from the very restrictions intended to weaken them.

The result: sanctions entrenched the regime, strengthened its hardliners, and weakened moderates who once advocated for engagement with the West. The paradox could not be clearer — sanctions designed to catalyze liberalization instead rewarded authoritarian rigidity.

9.8 North Korea: Isolation as Statecraft

No case illustrates the futility of sanctions more vividly than North Korea. Subjected to some of the harshest international sanctions regimes in history — covering arms, finance, fuel, and luxury goods — the DPRK remains a nuclear-armed state under the unchallenged rule of the Kim dynasty.

The New Yorker (2021) argues that sanctions on North Korea have inflicted immense humanitarian costs, creating chronic food insecurity and restricting access to medicine. Yet the regime has leveraged its isolation as a political tool, cultivating a siege mentality that reinforces loyalty and obedience. In Pyongyang’s narrative, poverty is not evidence of state failure but proof of resistance against hostile imperialists.

Like Iran, North Korea’s ruling elite profit from sanctions through monopolization of illicit trade. Black-market networks in China and Southeast Asia provide access to goods, while the regime selectively distributes resources to maintain loyalty among elites and security forces. Far from breaking the regime’s hold, sanctions have hardened it.

The implications are sobering: if North Korea, among the world’s poorest nations, can withstand decades of near-total embargoes, then the utility of sanctions as tools of regime change is questionable at best.

9.9 Zimbabwe: Sanctions and the Politics of Blame

Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe provides another instructive case. Western sanctions were imposed in the early 2000s in response to authoritarian consolidation, human rights abuses, and violent land seizures. The intended effect was to weaken Mugabe’s regime and encourage democratic reforms.

Instead, Mugabe weaponized sanctions politically. He blamed the West for Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, deflecting responsibility from his government’s disastrous policies. This narrative was effective domestically, consolidating Mugabe’s nationalist credentials and portraying the opposition as puppets of foreign powers.

As with Syria and Cuba, sanctions allowed an authoritarian leader to redefine hardship as patriotic resistance. For ordinary Zimbabweans, sanctions meant deepening poverty, hyperinflation, and mass migration — but for Mugabe, they provided the perfect foil for authoritarian endurance.

9.10 Why Regimes Outlast Sanctions

Across these cases — Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Syria, Venezuela, Belarus, Cuba, and Myanmar — a clear pattern emerges. Sanctions rarely achieve political change because they fail to account for how regimes adapt and manipulate crises. Several core reasons explain their survival:

• Sanctions Create External Enemies: Leaders under pressure shift blame externally, portraying themselves as defenders against foreign aggression. This redefines dissent as treason and silences internal opposition.
• Authoritarian Resourcefulness: Autocracies thrive on informal economies, black markets, and illicit finance. Sanctions, by creating scarcity, expand these shadow systems — often controlled by elites themselves.
• Selective Distribution: Regimes use scarcity as a political tool, rewarding loyalty with access to food, medicine, and patronage while punishing dissenters.
• Alternative Alliances: In a multipolar world, sanctioned states find support from rivals of the West. China, Russia, Turkey, and Gulf states have provided lifelines to sanctioned regimes, eroding the intended isolation.
• Civilian Costs vs. Elite Immunity: Sanctions rarely touch the insulated lifestyles of ruling elites. They continue to enjoy privileges while civilians endure the hardship, which weakens the social base for democratic movements.

These dynamics explain why sanctions, though devastating economically, often fail politically. They punish societies but spare regimes.

9.11 The Humanitarian Fallout

One of the most profound criticisms of sanctions is their human cost. The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins (2025) warns that in Syria, sanctions entrenched Assad while simultaneously starving civilians of essentials like fuel and medicine. The same dynamic is evident in Venezuela, where sanctions deepened food insecurity and spurred one of the largest migration crises in Latin American history.

The New Humanitarian (2023), though focused on Niger, underscores the generalizable truth: sanctions are experienced as collective punishment. Hospitals ration antibiotics, electricity is cut, and food prices spike — while elites remain shielded.

Thus, even if sanctions theoretically weaken economies, they do so by weakening the wrong actors: ordinary people. Instead of empowering civil society to demand change, sanctions leave populations exhausted, impoverished, and more dependent on authoritarian rulers.

9.12 Rethinking Sanctions in Global Governance

If sanctions repeatedly fail to achieve their stated aims, why do they persist as a dominant tool of international statecraft?

Part of the answer lies in political optics. Sanctions are attractive to policymakers because they project decisiveness without requiring military engagement. They allow leaders in Washington, Brussels, or London to demonstrate resolve to domestic audiences without risking soldiers’ lives. Yet, as Chatham House (2025) argues, this makes sanctions performative rather than transformative — a ritual of punishment that satisfies the need to act, even when ineffective.

The deeper danger is strategic exhaustion. Over-reliance on sanctions dilutes their effectiveness, erodes international consensus, and signals to adversaries that Western powers lack more innovative tools of influence. As the world shifts toward multipolarity, sanctions risk becoming blunt relics of a fading order.

9.13 Toward Smarter Sanctions or Alternatives?

What then is the future of sanctions? Analysts suggest several paths:

1. Narrower Targeting: Precision sanctions aimed at individuals — with real enforcement on luxury assets, financial accounts, and travel — may avoid the broad humanitarian harms of economic embargoes.
2. Humanitarian Exemptions: Sanctions must be designed with enforceable carve-outs for food, medicine, and essential goods to prevent collective punishment.
3. Multilateral Coordination: Without global consensus, sanctions are easily undermined. A more united approach through the U.N. or G20 could enhance legitimacy and enforcement.
4. Beyond Sanctions: Perhaps most importantly, policymakers must reconsider whether sanctions are overused altogether. Diplomatic engagement, incentives for reform, and long-term investment in civil society may be more effective in fostering change than economic strangulation.

As International Affairs (2024) notes, the paradox is structural: sanctions rarely topple regimes but often bolster them. To continue relying on a failing instrument risks repeating cycles of human suffering without political gain.

9.14 Conclusion: The Futility of Punishment Without Change

From Havana to Harare, from Tehran to Pyongyang, the story is the same: sanctions devastate economies, deepen authoritarian resilience, and rarely achieve regime change. The New Yorker (2021) captured this irony succinctly: sanctions too often fail not because they lack severity, but because they misunderstand power. Regimes do not fall simply because economies collapse — they endure through coercion, propaganda, and external alliances.

Simon Jenkins’ (2025) warning about Syria rings universally true: sanctions may satisfy the moral impulses of sanctioning states, but they entrench the very regimes they seek to topple, leaving behind societies broken and powerless. Chatham House (2025) and International Affairs (2024) reinforce this conclusion: unless rethought fundamentally, sanctions will remain more a ritual of frustration than a mechanism of change.

The final lesson is sobering but clear. If the international community truly seeks political transformation in authoritarian states, it must abandon the illusion that economic punishment alone can birth democracy. Sanctions may remain part of the diplomatic arsenal, but without smarter frameworks, enforceable humanitarian safeguards, and complementary engagement strategies, they will continue to fail — punishing people, not power.

 

Part 10: The Humanitarian Cost Calculated

When medicine is blocked, the real cost is measured in lives, not ledgers.

10.8 Long-Term Health Consequences

When sanctions cut off medicine, vaccines, and health supplies, the consequences are rarely immediate headlines—they unfold in slow, devastating increments. Reuters (2023) reported how lifesaving vaccines sat stranded at border posts, while hospitals rationed dwindling stocks of antibiotics. This meant children missing immunizations, pregnant women denied prenatal care, and patients with chronic diseases left untreated.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (2023) warned that 185,000 children under five were at risk of malnutrition-related complications because humanitarian aid was trapped in bureaucratic gridlock. Malnutrition in early childhood is not simply about hunger; it permanently damages cognitive development, undermines immunity, and shortens life expectancy.

Thus, sanctions extend their reach beyond immediate shortages—they inscribe scars into an entire generation’s future. The “cost” is not measured in political concessions but in stunted bodies and truncated lives.

10.9 Development Halted

Sanctions not only deepen humanitarian crises—they stall decades of development. World Food Programme & World Bank (2023) showed how the suspension of international financing dismantled infrastructure projects, derailed education programs, and froze social welfare initiatives.

Consider roads half-built, schools without teachers, water projects left unfinished. Each abandoned development program compounds human suffering in ways that will last far beyond the lifespan of sanctions themselves. In Niger, already struggling with the world’s highest fertility rate and some of its weakest development indicators, sanctions ensured that a generation’s hope for progress was deferred indefinitely.

By stripping resources from long-term development, sanctions guarantee that even when lifted, nations emerge weaker, poorer, and more dependent—a paradox for policies often justified in the name of “stability.”

10.10 Regional Spillovers

The pain of sanctions does not stop at national borders. Niger’s sanctions sent shockwaves across the Sahel. Landlocked and reliant on trade with Nigeria and Benin, its isolation disrupted regional trade networks. Food shortages in Niger created ripple effects in neighboring states, as demand pressures spilled into border economies.

In fragile regions already battling jihadist insurgencies and climate-driven shocks, the added destabilization of sanctions compounded insecurity. What was designed as a targeted punishment became a destabilizing regional contagion.

This raises a larger ethical and strategic dilemma: how can policymakers defend sanctions as “targeted” when their effects bleed across borders, straining entire regions already on edge?

10.11 The Ethics of Humanitarian Harm

At the heart of Niger’s experience lies an uncomfortable ethical question: do sanctions constitute a legitimate instrument of international policy when they knowingly inflict suffering on millions of civilians?

Proponents argue that pressure must be applied to force regime change. Yet history repeatedly shows that authoritarian rulers rarely bend to external economic pain. Instead, the suffering falls on those least able to bear it: the poor, the sick, the children.

AP News (2023) captured this tension vividly: while junta backers proclaimed that enduring sanctions was a noble sacrifice, ordinary Nigeriens endured soaring food prices, shuttered hospitals, and a collapsed budget. The symbolism of resistance was purchased with the currency of human misery.

This is why agencies like the OHCHR and humanitarian groups have begun calling for a fundamental reevaluation of sanctions as a tool of statecraft. At minimum, humanitarian exemptions must be automatic, immediate, and enforceable. At best, policymakers must ask whether blunt instruments like sanctions can ever achieve political goals without breaching humanitarian principles.

10.12 Sanctions and the Legitimacy Paradox

Ironically, sanctions designed to delegitimize regimes often erode the legitimacy of those imposing them. When Nigeriens see their children starve, their hospitals darken, and their futures disappear, they do not blame the junta alone—they also blame the external actors tightening the noose.

Thus, sanctions risk transforming international institutions from arbiters of stability into agents of suffering in the eyes of local populations. In Niamey and beyond, ECOWAS’ credibility was dented not by its rhetoric, but by the images of hungry children it helped create.

This legitimacy paradox undermines the very moral authority sanctions claim to wield. Instead of strengthening democratic aspirations, they can leave populations cynical about international norms, skeptical of human rights rhetoric, and more inclined to embrace the very regimes sanctions sought to weaken.

10.13 Conclusion: The Silent Toll

Niger’s sanctions in 2023 stand as a stark case study in the humanitarian cost of economic statecraft. They illustrate, with painful clarity, that sanctions rarely punish leaders—they punish people. They transform bread into a luxury, electricity into a memory, and health into a privilege.

The humanitarian toll is not collateral damage—it is the primary impact. From 2 million food-insecure Nigeriens to 185,000 malnourished children, from hospitals without medicine to a 40 percent gutted budget, the evidence is overwhelming: sanctions wound nations in ways that may take generations to heal.

If the international community is serious about justice, stability, and human rights, it must confront the contradiction at the heart of sanctions: they are tools that promise accountability but deliver suffering.

Until then, the cost of sanctions will not be measured in diplomatic victories but in the silent graves of children, the darkened classrooms of students, and the empty shelves of hospitals. Niger’s tragedy is not an aberration—it is the inevitable outcome of a policy tool designed to harm and rarely designed to heal.

  

Part 11: African Governments Fighting to Lift Restrictions

In Niger, sanctions meant for leaders became shackles on the people.

11.1 Niger: Sanctions as Collective Punishment

When ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger in 2023 following the coup that deposed President Mohamed Bazoum, the official justification was straightforward: restore democracy or face economic suffocation. Yet, as AP News (2023) reported, what unfolded on the ground was not pressure on the junta but punishment of civilians. Electricity imports from Nigeria were cut, aid shipments stalled at borders, and food and medicine shortages multiplied. The national budget shrank by nearly 40 percent, crippling development projects.

This pressure cooker environment, instead of isolating the junta, fueled its political narrative. Niger’s leaders reframed sanctions as an external assault on sovereignty, painting ECOWAS and Western backers as neo-colonial enforcers. Crowds in Niamey rallied not against the generals but in their defense, chanting slogans against Paris and Abuja.

Diplomatically, Niger and its allies Mali and Burkina Faso formed the “Alliance of Sahel States,” vowing collective resistance to sanctions. The move was more than symbolism: it was an attempt to rewrite regional politics, challenging ECOWAS’ authority and claiming the mantle of African independence.

11.2 Mali: From Isolation to Defiance

Mali’s coup in 2021 produced a similar standoff. ECOWAS sanctions cut off financial transfers, closed borders, and froze assets. Yet rather than crumble, Bamako doubled down. Military rulers expelled French forces, turned toward Russian security assistance, and leaned on domestic messaging that framed sanctions as a betrayal by fellow Africans.

Malian leaders were quick to weaponize history. They invoked the memory of colonial exploitation and accused ECOWAS of acting as a puppet for Western capitals. National television aired daily segments showing empty markets and halted aid trucks, blaming “external strangulation” for the suffering. Public anger, instead of toppling the junta, bolstered its legitimacy.

This pattern mirrored Niger’s experience: sanctions created economic pain but politically strengthened those in power by enabling them to channel blame outward.

11.3 Zimbabwe: Endurance as Resistance

Zimbabwe offers one of the longest-running examples of African resistance to sanctions. Imposed in the early 2000s, U.S. and EU restrictions targeted officials in Robert Mugabe’s government over land seizures and human rights abuses. Yet instead of weakening ZANU-PF’s grip, the sanctions were used as proof of Western hostility.

Harare adopted a narrative of defiance, casting itself as a frontline state resisting imperialism. Mugabe’s speeches thundered against “illegal sanctions” designed to punish Zimbabwe for redistributing land from white settlers to black farmers. The government coined slogans like “Sanctions are a crime against humanity,” appealing to continental solidarity.

The effect was twofold: it isolated Zimbabwe internationally but consolidated ZANU-PF domestically. Opposition parties were branded as stooges of the West, while the sanctions became a rallying point for nationalism. By the 2010s, the debate about Zimbabwe’s economic collapse was less about policy failures and more about who to blame—sanctions or misrule.

11.4 Sudan: Sanctions and Survival

Sudan, subjected to U.S. sanctions from the 1990s until partial lifting in 2017, developed a complex resistance playbook. Cut off from Western banking, Khartoum deepened trade ties with China, Malaysia, and Gulf states. Oil pipelines and infrastructure projects financed by Beijing allowed Sudan to survive economic isolation, albeit at the cost of dependency on new patrons.

Here, resistance was pragmatic: rather than rhetorical defiance alone, Sudan leveraged geopolitics. By positioning itself as a partner in the “war on terror” post-9/11 and offering intelligence cooperation, Khartoum bargained its way to partial sanctions relief. Yet the sanctions era left scars—crumbling healthcare systems, declining education investment, and heightened poverty.

Still, Sudanese leaders maintained the narrative that sanctions were designed not to promote reform but to undermine sovereignty and extract concessions. This story resonated across Africa, reinforcing skepticism about sanctions as tools of justice.

11.5 Sovereignty as a Weapon

A common thread unites these cases: sovereignty is the central defense. Sanctioned governments rarely contest the charges against them—be it coups, corruption, or repression. Instead, they shift the battlefield to identity and dignity. By invoking sovereignty, they reframe sanctions as collective punishment of nations, not targeted pressure on elites.

In Niger, the junta declared: “We will not trade our sovereignty for electricity.” In Zimbabwe, sovereignty was equated with land ownership. In Mali, it meant rejecting French tutelage. Sovereignty thus becomes both shield and sword: a justification for resisting sanctions and a rallying cry to mobilize public support.

11.6 The Diplomatic Battlefield

African governments also fight sanctions in the diplomatic corridors of the United Nations, African Union, and even Western capitals. Lobbyists are hired to argue that sanctions fuel instability, increase migration, and worsen humanitarian crises—risks that threaten Europe and America as much as Africa.

In Washington, sanctioned states emphasize that sanctions create vacuums quickly filled by rival powers like Russia and China. In Brussels, they stress that sanctions undermine EU influence by alienating African populations. Within the AU, debates over sanctions often expose deep rifts, as member states weigh principles of democracy against fears of setting precedents that could one day be used against them.

11.7 South Africa: The Exception That Proves the Rule

No discussion of sanctions in Africa is complete without South Africa under apartheid. For decades, activists across the globe demanded sanctions on Pretoria to force an end to racial rule. Western governments hesitated, fearing economic fallout and strategic loss. But by the mid-1980s, the tide turned: international boycotts of South African goods, divestment campaigns targeting major corporations, and financial embargoes began to bite.

Unlike Niger or Zimbabwe, where governments used sanctions as nationalist fuel, in South Africa sanctions aligned with internal resistance. The African National Congress (ANC), trade unions, and grassroots movements framed sanctions not as punishment of ordinary citizens but as solidarity with their struggle. The economic pain, though real, was interpreted as necessary pressure on an illegitimate regime.

The lesson here is stark: sanctions are effective only when they reinforce domestic demands for change. Where governments can capture the narrative and recast sanctions as neo-colonial oppression, they backfire. Where they resonate with the aspirations of the oppressed, they can accelerate transformation.

11.8 Continental Divisions: ECOWAS, AU, and the Sanctions Dilemma

The Niger crisis exposed deep fissures within Africa’s regional blocs. ECOWAS presented a united front in rhetoric, but member states such as Mali and Burkina Faso openly defied its sanctions regime. Even Nigeria, the regional giant, faced domestic unease as the costs of sanctions reverberated through northern states dependent on cross-border trade.

The African Union (AU) often strikes a careful balance. On paper, it endorses principles of democratic governance and condemns coups. Yet in practice, its member states are reluctant to endorse sanctions too aggressively, fearing the precedent. As one AU diplomat quipped: “Today it is Niger, tomorrow it could be us.”

This hesitation dilutes the bite of sanctions. Without a united continental stance, sanctioned states find allies within Africa willing to break ranks. Trade reroutes through sympathetic neighbors, financial transfers flow through loopholes, and solidarity rhetoric shields governments from isolation.

11.9 Economic Nationalism as a Counter-Strategy

African governments fighting sanctions increasingly deploy the language of economic nationalism. In Mali, slogans call for “producing what we eat” and “ending dependency.” In Zimbabwe, state media celebrates small-scale farming as a patriotic duty against Western embargoes. Even in Niger, community markets sprouted with slogans about “resisting the blockade.”

Of course, such narratives rarely translate into sustainable economic models. Domestic industries remain weak, and shortages persist. But as political tools, they are powerful. Citizens are told their suffering is not in vain but part of a national sacrifice for dignity and independence. This reframing transforms economic pain into political capital for regimes under siege.

11.10 Lessons from Failure and Success

The African record shows three broad lessons about fighting sanctions:

1. Narrative is Everything.
   Sanctions succeed or fail depending on who controls the story. In South Africa, the ANC owned the narrative, linking sanctions to liberation. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe owned it, portraying sanctions as imperial punishment. The same tool produced opposite results.
2. Regional Unity is Fragile.
   ECOWAS, SADC, and the AU often struggle to enforce sanctions uniformly. Divergent interests allow sanctioned states to find loopholes. Without airtight regional cooperation, sanctions become symbolic gestures rather than binding constraints.
3. Adaptation Outpaces Pressure.
   Sanctioned states quickly adapt—seeking new allies, creating alternative trade routes, or relying on black markets. The longer sanctions persist, the more normalized these adaptations become, reducing their leverage.

11.11 The Global Arena: Lobbying Against Sanctions

African governments under sanctions rarely confine their resistance to local or regional stages. They invest heavily in lobbying Western capitals, hiring public relations firms and legal teams to argue their case. Zimbabwe retained Washington lobbyists to push for the repeal of U.S. sanctions. Sudan used oil wealth to secure allies in Beijing and Moscow, who in turn blocked harsher UN sanctions. Niger’s junta dispatched envoys to Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf to court diplomatic cover.

This global lobbying often emphasizes humanitarian impacts: children without medicine, hospitals without power, farmers without seeds. The goal is not only to humanize the costs but also to create fractures in the international consensus sustaining sanctions. The longer sanctions last, the more sympathy shifts from sanctioning powers to sanctioned populations.

11.12 Sanctions as a Mirror of Power

Ultimately, the story of African governments fighting sanctions is less about economics than about politics. Sanctions expose the asymmetry of global power—who can punish, who must endure. Yet they also expose the resilience of states under siege. By reframing sanctions as attacks on sovereignty, by mobilizing domestic nationalism, and by leveraging global rivalries, African governments carve out space to resist.

Niger, Mali, and Zimbabwe remind us that sanctions can strengthen the very regimes they seek to weaken. South Africa, however, proves that when sanctions align with internal struggle, they can topple entrenched systems. The paradox remains unresolved.

What is clear is that Africa has never been a passive recipient of sanctions. It has been an active theater of resistance, improvisation, and redefinition. From Niamey to Harare, from Khartoum to Pretoria, the continent’s governments have shown that sanctions may bite—but they rarely break.

 

Part 12: Global Reform Calls: Rethinking Sanctions

If sanctions have become the weapon of choice for powerful states, the time has come to question whether this weapon serves justice—or merely perpetuates cycles of harm.

12.1 The Broken Promise of Sanctions

For decades, sanctions have been sold as the “middle path” between war and diplomacy—a tool designed to punish rogue governments while sparing civilians. Yet history shows that this middle path often collapses under its own contradictions.

As The New Yorker (2021) observes in its wide-ranging review of sanction regimes from Cuba to Iraq, sanctions rarely produce the political outcomes advertised. They are supposed to pressure governments into compliance, but in practice they create black markets, entrench ruling elites, and devastate ordinary citizens. The assumption that economic strangulation will force democratic reforms ignores the resilience of authoritarian systems, which frequently redirect suffering toward populations while shielding themselves through patronage and repression.

The historical record is damning: half a century of sanctions on Cuba did not topple Havana. Years of embargoes on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq produced malnutrition and child mortality, but the dictator remained until a U.S. invasion removed him. Sanctions on North Korea have neither curbed its nuclear program nor loosened the Kim dynasty’s grip. They are, in short, a policy tool whose results diverge radically from their intent.

12.2 The Guardian’s Indictment: Sanctions as Failure

By 2025, the global conversation had turned sharper, with critics calling for outright abandonment of sanctions as a primary foreign policy tool. Simon Jenkins, writing in The Guardian (2025), labels sanctions not just ineffective but morally indefensible. He cites Syria, where long-term Western sanctions devastated public health systems yet consolidated Assad’s power. He highlights Russia and Iran, where sanctions pushed regimes closer to one another while fueling anti-Western nationalism.

For Jenkins, the logic is simple: sanctions do not break regimes—they break societies. He argues instead for a return to free trade and engagement, proposing that economic integration builds constituencies for peace more effectively than punishment does. Where sanctions isolate and radicalize, trade creates interdependence, which over time can soften authoritarian systems and create openings for reform.

This critique strikes at the heart of the sanctions paradox: the more sweeping and punitive the measures, the more likely they are to entrench the very regimes they are supposed to undermine. The victims are not dictators but diabetic patients denied insulin, farmers without fertilizer, and students unable to access global scholarships.

12.3 Chatham House: A Call for Smarter Sanctions

While The Guardian calls for abolition, other institutions argue for reform rather than rejection. Chatham House (2025), in its analysis of sanctions practice, acknowledges both their strategic necessity and their tragic shortcomings. It concedes that sanctions have often been designed with broad strokes, resulting in unintended harms—crippling healthcare systems, disrupting humanitarian aid, and punishing neighboring states caught in the crossfire.

But rather than discard sanctions, Chatham House calls for a redesign:

• Targeted Measures: Precision sanctions aimed at individuals, elites, and entities rather than whole economies. Freezing assets of oligarchs and restricting luxury imports can apply pressure without collapsing basic services.
• Humanitarian Exemptions: Establishing automatic carve-outs for food, medicine, and energy to prevent collective punishment.
• Sunset Clauses and Reviews: Sanctions should not be indefinite; they should expire unless renewed after evidence-based assessment.
• Multilateral Coordination: Sanctions work best when globally aligned; unilateral or fragmented efforts create loopholes that rogue states exploit.

This reformist approach acknowledges reality: sanctions are unlikely to disappear from the diplomatic toolkit. But they must be sharpened into a scalpel rather than wielded as a blunt hammer.

12.4 Africa’s Voice in the Reform Debate

African governments, having borne the brunt of sanctions spillovers, are now pushing to reshape the global sanctions regime. The Niger crisis demonstrated how sanctions can devastate an already fragile economy: halting trade, freezing assets, and blocking humanitarian supplies. In Zimbabwe, sanctions became a political football, used by ZANU-PF to justify authoritarian entrenchment while opposition voices decried their humanitarian cost.

These experiences feed into Africa’s growing demand at the UN and other international forums: sanctions must no longer be designed without meaningful consultation with affected regions. Instead, regional organizations like the African Union insist that sanctions should include humanitarian safeguards and regional monitoring mechanisms.

12.5 Toward a Multipolar Order of Sanctions

The push for reform also coincides with a shifting global balance of power. In a multipolar order, sanctions are no longer the monopoly of Western states. China and Russia increasingly use sanctions or countersanctions as tools of leverage. The result is a fragmented landscape where states caught in between—often African nations—face cross-pressures from multiple sanctioning powers.

This multipolarity makes reform urgent. Without agreed rules, sanctions risk becoming instruments of great-power rivalry, further destabilizing global trade and humanitarian flows. As Chatham House warns, the unchecked proliferation of sanctions regimes risks undermining the very international order they claim to defend.

12.6 The Sanctions Paradox: Why They Strengthen Autocrats

One of the most unsettling patterns is how sanctions, rather than weakening authoritarian rulers, often reinforce them. As The New Yorker (2021) and Chatham House (2025) both note, regimes under siege frequently redirect the pain of sanctions downward, creating a narrative of victimhood that rallies citizens around the flag.

In Cuba, decades of embargoes allowed Havana to frame the U.S. as a hostile aggressor, solidifying loyalty even among those who resented the regime. In Russia, sanctions after Crimea and the Ukraine invasion allowed Vladimir Putin to recast himself as defender of the nation against Western imperialism. Instead of splintering elites, sanctions often bind them closer together, as survival becomes a collective interest.

This is the central flaw of sanctions logic: they assume that ordinary suffering will translate into political revolt. In reality, repression and propaganda ensure that suffering translates into submission—or misdirected anger against the sanctioning powers.

12.7 From Collective Punishment to Collective Responsibility

If sanctions are to survive as a legitimate instrument of statecraft, they must shed their association with collective punishment. Simon Jenkins in The Guardian (2025) makes a crucial point: when sanctions cut off food, medicine, and energy, they become indistinguishable from siege warfare, a practice long condemned under international law.

The path forward lies in embedding collective responsibility into sanctions design. This means sanctioning regimes should:

• Work with humanitarian agencies to ensure uninterrupted aid flows.
• Establish independent monitoring to verify that exemptions reach civilians.
• Require sanctioning states to report publicly on humanitarian impacts.
• Compensate affected civilian populations through targeted relief packages.

Without these reforms, sanctions will continue to be viewed by the Global South not as tools of justice but as instruments of neo-imperial coercion.

12.8 Alternative Instruments of Influence

Another reformist argument is that sanctions should not be the first or default tool of foreign policy. Chatham House (2025) advocates exploring alternatives that can achieve leverage without collateral devastation:

• Conditional Trade Access: Instead of cutting trade, offer expanded access tied to reforms, creating carrots rather than sticks.
• Financial Transparency: Use global banking regulations to target illicit flows rather than whole economies.
• Legal Accountability: Expand international prosecution mechanisms against leaders personally responsible for crimes, rather than punishing entire nations.
• Digital Diplomacy: Mobilize soft power through information, cultural exchange, and technology-sharing, offering populations alternatives to authoritarian narratives.

These measures recognize that influence is more sustainable when it persuades rather than coerces.

12.9 Africa’s Emerging Sanctions Doctrine

Africa’s own experiences are now shaping a new doctrine. The continent has endured the spillovers of sanctions designed in Washington, Brussels, or London but rarely in Addis Ababa, Lagos, or Johannesburg. From Zimbabwe to Niger, the lesson has been consistent: sanctions designed abroad too often punish populations at home.

As a result, African leaders are beginning to propose their own framework:

• Sanctions must never block humanitarian access.
• Regional bodies like the African Union should vet sanctions before implementation.
• Impact assessments must precede and accompany sanctions.
• Sanctions should include clear exit strategies, avoiding indefinite limbo.

By articulating these principles, African governments are not rejecting sanctions wholesale but demanding a voice in shaping the rules of a system that has long marginalized them.

12.10 The Moral Reckoning

The debate over sanctions is not merely technical—it is profoundly moral. If sanctions starve a child in Syria, deny insulin to a diabetic in Zimbabwe, or freeze educational scholarships for a student in Iran, can they still be defended as a legitimate tool of diplomacy?

Simon Jenkins (The Guardian, 2025) suggests they cannot, advocating that free trade and engagement are both morally superior and practically more effective. Critics counter that abandoning sanctions would leave the international community powerless against aggression, corruption, and nuclear proliferation.

This moral tension will not be resolved easily. But it forces a question: should the international system tolerate tools whose collateral damage rivals the very crises they seek to solve?

12.11 Toward a New Sanctions Architecture

The path forward may lie in what Chatham House (2025) describes as a new sanctions architecture—a system with transparency, humanitarian exemptions, and measurable benchmarks for success. Such an architecture could be anchored in multilateral frameworks, reducing the unilateral abuse of sanctions by powerful states.

This architecture would include:

• A UN-led Sanctions Oversight Council to track humanitarian impacts.
• Global sanctions databases to standardize information and prevent duplication.
• Impact metrics to evaluate whether sanctions achieve political goals within set timelines.
• Sunset clauses ensuring sanctions expire unless explicitly renewed.

Such reforms would transform sanctions from blunt instruments into conditional, time-bound measures, continuously monitored and refined.

12.12 The Future: Reform or Abandonment?

The future of sanctions rests on a binary choice: reform them or abandon them. The New Yorker (2021) insists that their historical record shows persistent failure. The Guardian (2025) argues they are morally corrosive and should be discarded in favor of trade and engagement. Chatham House (2025), however, believes in reform: smarter, more targeted, more humane.

In a multipolar world, where sanctions risk becoming weapons of rivalry rather than justice, the debate is urgent. For Africa, which has borne much of the collateral damage, the answer is clear: sanctions must either be redesigned to protect civilians—or removed from the arsenal of statecraft altogether.

12.13 Conclusion: A Call for Courage

Rethinking sanctions demands courage—the courage to admit that long-cherished tools have failed, the courage to confront the moral costs of policy decisions, and the courage to build alternatives that respect both justice and humanity.

Whether through abolition, as The Guardian urges, or through reform, as Chatham House proposes, the global community must ensure that sanctions no longer punish the powerless while leaving the powerful untouched.

Until then, sanctions will remain what The New Yorker called them: an illusion of action, a gesture that makes policymakers feel effective while leaving societies broken and regimes intact.

The choice now is clear. Reform or abandon. Anything less is complicity.

 

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