Suppose Mideast conflict, Hormuz raised oil prices?
Crude oil is one of the world’s most important commodities and its price has ripple effects through the broader economy.
Immortalised in the movie 300 and now the motto of the Army Corps of Greece, the famous line “Molon labe” is attributed to Leonidas the Spartan King.
It means ‘Come and take [them]’. The King Xerxes-led Persians had sent a messenger urging the Greeks to surrender, and Leonidas is said to have replied thus.
The movie is one of my favourites, what with its artistic mix of oratory creativity with awe-inspiring lines! But while I may indulge in my fancy on military movies, I take great notice of strategies employed.
Tsun Tzu’s military book is now a classic business compliment inasmuch as Carl von Clausewitz strategies guide modern warfare and business strategies.
So, in between the gory scenes of carnage in 300, I took note of a clever strategy employed by Leonidas’s army.
The pass of Thermopylae was a perfect place for the Greeks to deprive the Persians of their numerical advantage. With the sea on one side and high impassable cliffs on the other, the Spartans chose the narrowest point to make their stand. But where the Spartans decided to form up was between 12 and 30 metres wide.
Back to current events. The Gaza and Ukraine wars have made the world to wake up to the threat to vital supply chain routes. Like Thermopylae, or ‘hot gates’, a Middle East hot point on the Strait of Hormuz can spring an unprecedented logistical challenge.
Closure of this kyle by Iran, which has always used it as its Thermopylae in case of insecurity escalation, will see the global supply chain promptly grind to a halt.
Baby steps
With over 80 per cent of the vital fossil fuels passing through this strait, is it not time for the world to reconsider crude oil and stop the dependency? Inasmuch as there are baby steps towards this end on e-mobility, our energy mix is still heavily dependent on the ‘black gold’.
You can bet that any escalation in the Strait of Hormuz will have catastrophic consequences to developing countries, including Kenya.
It’s about time we worked on energy sufficiency. We import lithium batteries, whose core raw material is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Silicon is, by far, the most common semiconductor material used in solar cells, representing 95 per cent of the modules sold today. It is also the second-most abundant material (after oxygen) and the most common semiconductor used in computer chips.
So why does Kenya import solar panels?
Africa’s youth bulge should be a source of creativity and resourcefulness. A concrete strategy to produce the value chain products of solar system can be a Marshall Plan for not only energy security but also employment creation on a scale never seen before.
Our main partnership with the Global North should be premised on technology transfer. In my previous work in hospitality, in the Middle East, I noted a creative way the Chinese achieved technology transfer. After working in seven-star hotels with European standards, they would go back to their country in two years. What a creative way to transfer technology/knowledge!
- Ms Hassan is the business development manager at Solarnow Services (EA) Ltd. [email protected].
