AfDB: Middle East war threatens Africa’s growth
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has threatened to target United States tech companies operating in the Middle East.

A statement issued by the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency on Tuesday listed around 20 companies that would be considered “legitimate military targets”, including Boeing, Tesla, Meta, HP, Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

“Since the main element in designing and tracking terrorist targets are American and ICT and AI companies … from now on, [these] main institutions will be our legitimate targets,” the statement reads.

The IRGC urged employees and people living nearby to evacuate immediately.

The attacks are scheduled from 8pm local time on Wednesday if more Iranian leaders are killed in “targeted assassinations”, the Iranian military said.

Earlier, Israel’s army said it has conducted more than 230 strikes across Iran in the last 24 hours, in what it described as a systematic campaign to degrade Iranian military capacity.

Iran has repeatedly accused Israel and the U.S. of targeting civilian infrastructure.

The Islamic Republic had previously threatened to target U.S. and Israeli academic institutions in the region after recent air strikes against the Isfahan University of Technology and Tehran’s Iran University of Science and Technology.

As the United States, Iran and Israel tripartite war enters its fifth week with no end in sight, the African Development Bank has warned that the fallout of the conflict poses a significant downside risk to Africa’s economic growth, as the continent could lose up to 1.5 percentage points in output if the crisis persists beyond six months.

Speaking at the launch of the 2026 Africa’s Macroeconomic Performance and Outlook (MEO) report, AfDB’s chief economist, Kelvin Urama, said while the immediate impact may appear moderate, prolonged disruptions could deepen existing economic vulnerabilities.

According to Urama, the extent of the shock would largely depend on the duration of the conflict, warning that longer episodes of instability in the Middle East could significantly undermine Africa’s fragile recovery.

“If the war continues for up to six months, we might see about a 1.5 per cent decline,” he said, adding that growth could also dip by 0.2 percentage points if the conflict is contained within three months.

AfDB in the report noted that Africa’s economic outlook is already under pressure from weak foreign direct investment inflows, declining official development assistance, and tightening global financial conditions, all of which have compounded the continent’s exposure to external shocks.

Despite these headwinds, the bank retained its growth projections at 4.3 per cent for 2026 and 4.5 per cent for 2027, reflecting a cautious optimism anchored on resilience in some key sectors.