Who will rid us of this ill-considered war? Erratically prosecuted by an American president confused about its strategic purpose, the prolonged conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has caused great economic uncertainty but has also served to clarify and reinforce the following important new realities: It has demonstrated the limits of American power, underlining the fundamental shift towards multipolarity in international relations. Donald Trump’s expectation was that the US attack on Iran would remind the world of US military power and political leadership. Instead, it has diminished both. It has shown the resilience of emerging and frontier markets, despite the impact on oil supply and prices. Analysts point to years of improved macro frameworks — stronger forex reserve buffers and improved external positions — as having reduced systemic vulnerability across these economies. The impact on energy supply and markets has fast-tracked the global energy transition. As Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based climate think tank Power Shift Africa, writes in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, the war on Iran is doing more than rattling oil markets: “It is accelerating a determination among African countries to reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels and to turn towards renewable power.” This is an exquisite paradox. Like his namesake, Don Quixote, Trump is prone to tilting at windmills — of the renewable energy variety in this case. But his military adventurism in the Gulf is running strongly against the grain of his equally irrational attempt to blast energy policy back into the last century. Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” call to arms is more likely to become the fossil fuel industry’s equivalent of King Canute commanding the tide. Corporate reports are rarely known for their sense of irony, but the latest Emerging Markets & Commodities Outlook (Emco) report published by ICBC Standard Bank wryly notes in the margin that “when the wind changes, some build walls, while others build windmills”. It views the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz as a central transmission shock, meaning commodity prices are increasingly reflecting not only supply-demand fundamentals but also risk premiums linked to security concerns, trade disruption and policy uncertainty. Looking beyond the crisis, the Emco report evaluates countries along two dimensions: share of primary energy consumption from renewable resources and critical minerals reserves. Brazil hits the sweet spot, with high renewable energy consumption and deep reserves of critical minerals, though South Africa could catch up if it were to accelerate its shift to renewable energy, which urgently depends on a vastly increased transmission grid. The grid constraint is a bottleneck where some development finance institutions have begun to quietly do the heavy lifting. British International Investment, the UK’s development finance institution, has been channelling capital into exactly that kind of infrastructure — from a R1bn secondary-market renewable energy fund with Alexforbes in South Africa to blended-finance vehicles designed to get hydropower and off-grid solar projects past the point where commercial lenders won’t touch them. In Foreign Affairs, Adow concludes with the right exam question, as posed by the piece’s headline: “Can Renewables Industrialise Africa?” — while fretting about the US losing out to China: “Africa is now at the centre of the world’s clean energy push, no longer at its periphery. And by embedding itself deeply into Africa’s energy infrastructure, China is positioning itself as a long-term strategic partner for industrialising the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent.” As Adow points out, the main constraint is not the abundant renewable energy sources in Africa, but financing, transmission infrastructure and the institutional capacity to integrate new sources of power. So banks and investors with a stake in Africa’s growth and development will need to turn their minds to how best to answer the exam question. Given the global uncertainty, this will need strategic wit and foresight, as well as the deeper sense of purpose that the current age of turbulence demands. As ICBC Standard Bank observes, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. • Calland is director of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Africa, which has entered into a partnership with ICBC Standard Bank to support professional development in the bank.