Between a 09:00-17:00 day in London or Lisbon and one in Accra, Dakar or Casablanca you get eight shared hours in winter and seven in summer; between Berlin and Nairobi you get six in winter and seven in summer. Most of the surprises come from three places: the five days around 25 October 2026, Morocco's September change, and Egypt's separate calendar for summer time.
All figures below are computed, not quoted: each office day is 09:00-17:00 local with no lunch break removed, offsets come from the IANA time zone database, with the winter case computed for 15 January 2026 and the summer case for 15 July 2026, then re-checked by hand.
Key takeaways
- Overlap ranges from five hours (Nairobi or Addis with London or Lisbon in winter) to eight (West Africa with London, or Johannesburg with Paris in summer).
- Europe changes clocks on 25 October 2026. Egypt does not until 30 October, so Cairo runs one hour ahead of its usual gap for five days.
- Morocco stopped changing clocks on 20 September 2026 and now sits on UTC+0 all year, which removes the old Ramadan switch.
- Public holidays move more than clocks do. Ask for the partner's holiday calendar by name of country, not by assumption.
The table
Overlap in hours. Read each cell as London and Lisbon / Paris and Berlin, because those pairs share offsets in every season.
| Hub | Offset from UTC | Winter | Summer | |---|---|---|---| | Lagos | +1 all year | 7 / 8 | 8 / 7 | | Accra | 0 all year | 8 / 7 | 7 / 6 | | Dakar | 0 all year | 8 / 7 | 7 / 6 | | Casablanca | 0 all year (from 20 Sep 2026) | 8 / 7 | 7 / 6 | | Nairobi | +3 all year | 5 / 6 | 6 / 7 | | Addis Ababa | +3 all year | 5 / 6 | 6 / 7 | | Kigali | +2 all year | 6 / 7 | 7 / 8 | | Johannesburg, Cape Town | +2 all year | 6 / 7 | 7 / 8 | | Cairo | +2 winter, +3 summer | 6 / 7 | 6 / 7 |
Europe is on UTC+0 (London, Lisbon) or UTC+1 (Paris, Berlin) in winter and one hour more in summer. The pattern is simple: when Europe moves forward and an African hub does not, the overlap shrinks by an hour for hubs to the west and grows by an hour for hubs to the east.
Cairo is the exception. Because Egypt also shifts, its overlap stays at six or seven hours in both seasons, apart from the gaps described below.
When the clocks do not move together
The UK and the EU change on the last Sunday of March and October. For 2026, the UK government lists 29 March and 25 October (GOV.UK). The IANA database encodes the EU rule as the last Sunday in March and October at 01:00 UTC (IANA, europe file).
Egypt uses its own rule. IANA records it as the last Friday of April until the last Thursday of October at 24:00, following a government announcement in 2023 (IANA, africa file). Egypt Independent reported that summer time in 2026 began in the first minutes of Friday 24 April (Egypt Independent). That produces two odd windows:
- 29 March to 23 April 2026. Europe is on summer time, Cairo is not. Cairo is on its winter offset, so overlap runs one hour longer than in the summer column: eight hours with Paris or Berlin, seven with London or Lisbon.
- 25 to 29 October 2026. Europe is back on winter time, Cairo is still on summer time. Overlap with London or Lisbon falls to five hours, with Paris or Berlin to six.
Teams that agreed a fixed "Cairo 11:00 standup" in September will find it moving against Europe twice a year, on different dates.
Morocco changed the rule in 2026
Until this autumn, Morocco held UTC+1 for most of the year and dropped to UTC+0 during Ramadan. IANA's database carries a note from 26 June 2026 that the government adopted Decree No. 2.26.530, abrogating the 2018 decree, with a return to UTC+0 without summer time on 20 September 2026 at 02:00. Moroccan outlet Le360 reported the same date and described it as a definitive return to GMT (Le360).
If your last working agreement with a Casablanca team assumed UTC+1, it is out of date. Many calendar and scheduling tools ship their own copy of the time zone database, so check that yours is current before relying on automatic conversion.
Ethiopia reads the clock differently
Addis Ababa is on UTC+3 officially, but a 2018 message on the IANA time zone mailing list describes a local convention in which the day is counted from sunrise, so that 6:00 AM is read as 12:00 (tz mailing list). The author warns that people unfamiliar with it can schedule meetings for the wrong hour. The table uses official time. Put meeting times in an explicit zone label with the other party.
Holidays and rest days
A shared overlap window is worth nothing on a day when one side is closed.
- Egypt. In January 2026 a prime ministerial decree moved the 25 January holiday from a Sunday to Thursday 29 January, and the Cairo Governorate notice says it covered the private sector as well as government bodies (Cairo Governorate). Midweek holidays can be shifted to Thursdays, so the date on a printed calendar may not hold.
- Ghana. In June 2025 the Ghana News Agency reported a proposal to let the President move holidays that fall on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday to the preceding Friday or following Monday (GNA). The 2025 amending Act (Act 1142, assented to 30 June 2025) gives the President power to declare another day in place of a holiday (Act 1142 text); only part of the Act's text was readable for this article, so check the final wording. Farmers' Day (5 December), Christmas Day and Boxing Day are on the national list in that report.
- South Africa. The government lists 16, 25 and 26 December as 2026 public holidays, and states that a holiday falling on a Sunday is followed by a public Monday holiday (South African Government).
Kenyan and Nigerian holiday rules and Egypt's weekend and Ramadan working hours could not be confirmed from an official page for this article, so they are left out. Ask the partner for its calendar for the contract year.
A worked example
A Berlin product team and an engineering team in Nairobi want one daily sync. In summer, Berlin is UTC+2 and Nairobi UTC+3. Berlin 09:00 equals Nairobi 10:00, so the overlap runs 10:00-17:00 in Nairobi, seven hours. In winter Berlin is UTC+1, the gap grows to two hours, and the overlap is 11:00-17:00 Nairobi, six hours.
The same team, working with London, has Nairobi 12:00-17:00 in winter, five hours. A sync at 12:30 Nairobi time is 09:30 in London and a decent compromise for both.
Buyer guidance
- Agree meetings in the zone of the party that moves less. Write "Lagos time" and "UTC", not a European label that shifts.
- Reserve the core overlap for decisions and reviews, and put hand-over notes in writing so the rest of the day can be asynchronous.
- Put the five-day October gap and the March-April gap in a calendar note for any Cairo team, and recheck in January for the 2027 schedule.
- For a Casablanca team, confirm in writing that everyone now uses UTC+0.
- Ask for a holiday calendar by country at signing and again each December, since South African, Ghanaian and Egyptian practices differ.
- When you shortlist a partner, filter by country and compare the overlap window with your own team's hours using the partner finder. For wider market context see intelligence.
Our reading and the best counterargument
Our reading: for a team that needs live collaboration, West Africa and Morocco are hard to beat for London and Lisbon, and Southern and East Africa fit Central Europe better in summer than most buyers expect. The counterargument is that overlap is a poor proxy for productivity. Teams that have six well-run overlapping hours and clear written hand-offs often outperform teams with eight chaotic ones. Treat the table as a constraint check, not a ranking.
Frequently asked questions
Which African hub has the most overlap with London? Accra, Dakar and Casablanca share the London offset in winter and give eight hours of overlap. In summer, Lagos gives eight.
Does Egypt change clocks on the same day as Europe? No. Egypt's rule runs from the last Friday of April to the last Thursday of October, so there are gaps of several days around Europe's changes.
Is Morocco still on UTC+1? Per IANA and Le360, Morocco returned to UTC+0 on 20 September 2026 and has no summer time or Ramadan switch under the new decree.
Can I assume Egypt's offset is GMT+2 for European hours? Only in winter. An ITIDA article calls Egypt's GMT+2 zone suited to European hours, which holds outside the summer-time months (ITIDA).
Sources
- IANA time zone database, africa file
- IANA time zone database, europe file
- GOV.UK, When do the clocks change
- Le360, Retour definitif a l'heure GMT
- Egypt Independent, daylight saving time on Friday
- Cairo Governorate, paid public holiday 29 January 2026
- ITIDA, Egypt's outsourcing sector enters a new era of higher-value growth
- South African Government, Public holidays
- Ghana News Agency, Government proposes changes to public holidays
- Ghana Public Holidays (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act 1142)
- IANA tz mailing list, Ethiopian local time