​ Article summary

• Africa’s construction market is under intense pressure, with projects facing some of the highest global cost overruns and delays.
• Scope change and restricted site access are the dominant fault lines—driving disruption on around a third of projects.
• Cashflow and payment risk is more acute than anywhere else, putting sustained strain on contractors and supply chains.
• Despite pockets of progress, structural constraints and external shocks continue to amplify risk, leaving projects highly exposed when disputes arise.

Based on findings from the CRUX Eighth Annual Report – From Insight to Foresight

Introduction

The construction and engineering market across Africa continues to face some of the most acute delivery pressures globally. CRUX data shows that projects in the region experience higher cost impacts and longer schedule overruns than most other parts of the world, driven by structural challenges around access, payment practices, capability constraints and economic volatility. While there are signs of improvement on more recent projects, Africa remains a region where disputes frequently result in severe financial outcomes.

Insights from the CRUX Eighth Annual Report underline how delivery risk in Africa is less about isolated project failures and more about systemic constraints that amplify disruption once projects come under stress.

A distinctive regional profile

Across Africa, change in scope remains the single most prevalent cause of claims and disputes, consistent with global trends. However, what distinguishes the region is the scale of disruption caused by restricted or late access to site, which rivals scope change as a trigger of conflict, both with 31.1% of CRUX projects affected by these issues. By contrast, restricted access to site for the rest of the world affects only 15.9% of projects.

Access‑related disputes have affected a significantly higher proportion of African projects than elsewhere, reflecting land acquisition challenges, permitting delays, third‑party constraints, community issues and infrastructure dependencies that often sit outside the direct control of project teams.

Cashflow and payment issues are another defining feature of the African dispute landscape. Claims arising from delayed or non‑payment occur far more frequently than in any other region, (27.9% compared to 14.3% for the rest of the World) reflecting weaker statutory protection, strained financing arrangements and heightened contractor vulnerability across the supply chain.

Design‑related failures—late, incomplete or incorrect information, remain important drivers of disputes, although they are generally less dominant than access and payment issues.

Longer construction project delays, higher financial impact

African projects have historically experienced some of the longest schedule overruns and highest cost impacts in the CRUX dataset. Claimed extensions of time standing at 68.9% of planned schedules, routinely exceed global averages, while the proportion of contract value in dispute has been materially higher than in other regions at 58.8% of planned CAPEX.

For projects scheduled to complete from 2020 onwards, there are encouraging signs of improvement. Average cost exposure fell sharply compared with earlier periods, and schedule overruns shortened. However, these outcomes are based on smaller samples and remain vulnerable to reversal, particularly where projects are still ongoing and disputes have yet to fully crystallise.

Despite these improvements, Africa continues to carry the highest overall financial risk when disputes do arise.

Access constraints as a structural risk

As mentioned earlier, -restricted or late access to site is one of Africa’s most persistent and disruptive risk factors. On projects scheduled to complete from 2020 onwards, disputes linked to access escalated significantly, affecting nearly a third of projects.

These issues are often intertwined with scope change and approvals, creating cascading effects on programme and cost. Where early works commence without secure access or fully resolved land and stakeholder arrangements, downstream disruption becomes difficult to contain.

CRUX data suggests that while some improvements have been made in approvals management and design coordination, access remains a structural constraint that continues to distinguish Africa from other regions.

Cashflow and payment: A persistent pressure point on construction projects

As mentioned disputes over cashflow and payment are more prevalent in Africa than anywhere else in the CRUX dataset. Over successive reporting periods, this cause has consistently affected more than a quarter of distressed projects, with spikes following major economic shocks such as the global financial crisis and the Ukraine invasion.

The absence of widespread payment security legislation leaves contractors and subcontractors particularly exposed, increasing the likelihood that financial stress translates directly into claims and disputes. On more recent projects, specifically those CRUX projects that had a planned construction end date of 2020 or later, payment issues have risen further up the ranking of dispute causes as other triggers have declined.

This environment places intense pressure on contractor margins and contributes to higher insolvency risk, which in turn compounds delivery disruption.

Contract management: Limited signs of improvement

Unlike Europe, the Americas or Oceania, Africa has not yet benefited fully from the global improvement in contract administration and management, with 19.7% of projectssuffering from these problems. Failures in contract management, disputes over interpretation, spurious claims and breaches of contract also remain comparatively prevalent.

CRUX findings suggest that this reflects a combination of factors, including capability constraints within project teams, reliance on bespoke or poorly adapted contracts, and limited access to experienced commercial and legal support on some projects.

While there are indications that design performance and workmanship have improved on more recent projects, contract‑centric disputes continue to undermine delivery outcomes.

COVID‑19 and economic shock

Africa was among the regions most heavily impacted by COVID‑19‑related claims and disputes, with almost a quarter (23.8%) of projects affected, Pandemic‑related disruption compounded existing vulnerabilities, intensifying access restrictions, labour shortages and cashflow stress.

Although the peak of COVID‑related disputes has passed, their effects continue to influence project outcomes, particularly where economic recovery remains uneven and financing conditions are tight.

Geopolitical energy shocks and their impact on the African construction market

In addition to our findings in CRUX, recent geopolitical escalations in the Middle East have introduced a new and significant external risk factor for African projects, primarily through energy price volatility. The 2026 conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran triggered one of the largest oil supply disruptions in modern history, with restrictions at the Strait of Hormuz affecting roughly 20% of global oil flows. As a result, oil prices surged sharply—rising by 30%–50% in early March 2026, with Brent crude briefly exceeding $110–$119 per barrel, and remaining more than 40% higher than pre‑conflict levels in subsequent weeks[1]

This has translated directly into higher fuel costs across Africa, where most countries are net importers of refined petroleum products. In some markets, diesel prices increased by over 24% during the conflict, while broader fuel price rises across the continent have ranged from 30% to 70%, with extreme cases even higher. Given diesel’s critical role in construction—powering plant, logistics, and backup generation—such increases place immediate upward pressure on project costs and contractor cashflow. [2]

For African construction and engineering projects, already highly exposed to payment delays and margin pressure, these energy shocks amplify financial risk, disrupt supply chains and increase the likelihood of claims, particularly under contracts with limited provisions for price escalation or force majeure linked to geopolitical events.

What this means for construction projects in Africa

The African picture is one of structural exposure rather than short‑term volatility. While recent data suggests a potential improvement in outcomes, the region remains highly sensitive to access constraints, payment practices and economic shocks.

The CRUX data reinforces several critical priorities for stakeholders operating in Africa:

• Securing access, land and approvals before construction mobilisation
• Strengthening payment security and cashflow protections across the supply chain
• Investing in contract management capability and training
• Reducing reliance on heavily bespoke contracts without adequate administration support

As construction and engineering investment across Africa continues to grow, sustained improvement in project outcomes will depend on addressing these systemic constraints—not just at project level, but across regulatory, contractual and financing frameworks.

We’re already seeing clients addressing some of these improvements, with the help of HKA experts. In particular in assisting with the move away from heavily, over-complex, bespoke contracts, often hundreds of pages long, immensely convoluted, and which create a lot of issues in negotiations with other stakeholders (ultimately increasing the contract price due to inevitable contract-risk contingencies), to a more streamlined and “clean” standardized based approach (while still importing specific matters relevant within their respective industries). Thus signalling a move in the right direction.

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[1] [en.wikipedia.org] [aljazeera.com], [timesofisrael.com] [cnbc.com]

[2] [aljazeera.com], [theguardian.com]

About the authors

About HKA’s Construction Claims and Dispute Management Services

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