Gulf states are no longer peripheral players in Africa’s political economy. Over the last decade, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have invested over $100 billion in Africa, led by the UAE with $59.4 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia at $25.6 billion, while bilateral trade has surged to $121 billion. The UAE is now Africa’s fourth-largest foreign direct investor, behind China, the EU, and the US.
What began as commercial outreach has evolved into a strategic project, with Gulf capital targeting ports, logistics networks, food systems and critical minerals that underpin economic security and geopolitical leverage. While Gulf investment has delivered visible gains in infrastructure, energy and trade, the overall impact has been uneven and often tilted towards Gulf strategic interests rather than broad-based African development. Asymmetric investment patterns, combined with weak governance constraints, have limited local value creation, allowing Gulf-led capital flows to reproduce existing structural vulnerabilities. African states must do what they can to strengthen their negotiating position to prevent the opportunities presented by Gulf investment turning into a new form of dependence.
Strategic intent, not development
What matters is not the volume of Gulf investment in Africa, but its intent. Far from being development-driven, Gulf capital is concentrated in strategic sectors – ports, logistics, agriculture, energy and critical minerals – that shape trade flows, secure resources and embed long-term influence. These investments are less about developing African economies than about positioning the Gulf at their centre. The Emirati logistics giant DP World operates ports across nearly a dozen African countries, with a 30-year contract to transform Dar es Salaam into a major trade hub, while AD Ports, Abu Dhabi’s state-backed ports operator, has committed $250 million to modernize terminals in Luanda and Pointe-Noire. The result is an emerging network of financial and trade corridors linking African markets to the Gulf, Asia and Europe, giving Gulf states greater influence over maritime routes, export flows, and the movement of capital across strategically important supply chains.
Gulf states are also using African land to secure their own food supply. With 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, Africa is central to Gulf food security strategies. Saudi Arabia has acquired 500,000 hectares in Tanzania, the UAE holds land leases in Sudan and Uganda, and Qatar has committed $500 million to agricultural investments. The effect is to externalize Gulf food production onto African soil.
The GCC is also positioning itself in critical minerals essential to its post-oil economic diversification strategy. With $2.2 billion already invested, Gulf actors are securing stakes in copper, cobalt and lithium supply chains across the continent. For instance, Saudi Arabia’s Manara Minerals, a joint venture between Ma’aden and the Public Investment Fund (PIF), is planning to deploy up to $15 billion, while Abu Dhabi’s International Resources Holding has acquired a majority stake in Zambia’s Mopani copper mine and a controlling stake in a major tin mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The strategic logic is clear, securing upstream access to critical minerals allows Gulf states to reduce dependence on external suppliers and support domestic industrial ambitions, from battery manufacturing to broader post-oil economic diversification.
The pull of Gulf capital
Gulf capital has stepped into a financing vacuum left by the retreat of traditional partners, such as the US and the UK, and a broader tightening of global development finance. Africa faces an annual infrastructure gap of $150 billion; global foreign direct investment to the continent shrank by 38 per cent in 2025; US development assistance fell by 90 per cent in the same year; and Chinese lending has declined significantly, as Beijing scales back overseas financing amid debt concerns and slower growth.
Gulf financing is also faster, more direct and largely free of the extensive conditions attached to Western or multilateral funding. Uganda’s decision to award a $4 billion refinery project to an Emirati firm, after abandoning a slower American bid, highlights a broader shift: for many African governments, speed and delivery outweigh procedural safeguards.
An uneven relationship
Beneath expanding Gulf–Africa ties sits a structurally uneven relationship in which investment patterns often prioritize extraction and external interests over local development. In sectors such as minerals, agricultural land, oil and gas, wealth is frequently extracted without generating substantial domestic value, leaving resource-rich areas with limited industrial upgrading or broad-based development. Communities most exposed to Gulf investment, such as farming households displaced by land acquisitions, often see the fewest gains.
At the same time, the Gulf has emerged as a financial haven for African political and business elites. By 2021, over 26,000 African companies were registered in Dubai – a one-third increase in four years – highlighting how easily capital, including illicit wealth, can be moved offshore. Dubai’s property market has absorbed unexplained wealth from African officials, while an estimated 95 per cent of its imported gold comes from conflict-affected states, such as Sudan, South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). Together, these flows show how wealth is extracted and parked abroad rather than invested at home, deepening elite enrichment and weakening already fragile governance.
Furthermore, Gulf engagement in Africa extends beyond economics into the political and security sphere, in some cases with destabilizing consequences. In Sudan, the UAE’s alleged backing of the RSF has been linked to a deepening of an already severe conflict, which the UAE has consistently denied, while emphasising calls for a sustainable ceasefire and diplomatic dialogue. Across the continent, Gulf patronage has in some cases been associated with the entrenchment of authoritarian governance, including reported support for figures such as Libya’s Khalifa Haftar, Chad’s Mahamat Déby and the CAR’s Faustin-Archange Touadéra. These ties have reinforced concerns about the weakening of fragile institutions and the reinforcement of clientelist structures at the expense of reform.
Overall, Africa increasingly risks becoming a theatre for Gulf geopolitical competition, where external finance and security ties entrench conflict and subordinate national priorities to foreign interests.
Preventing partnership from becoming dependence
Africa’s relationship with the Gulf risks becoming structurally asymmetrical: while Gulf investors secure ports, resources and trade corridors, many African economies remain confined to low-value, export-oriented roles shaped by external priorities. The problem is not the Gulf capital itself, but its tendency to reinforce dependence when investment favours extraction over domestic transformation. Without stronger safeguards, African states may gradually lose influence over sectors central to long-term sovereignty.
Regional instability may deepen this challenge. The 2026 Iran war has forced Gulf governments to reassess overseas commitments through a security lens. If tensions persist, sovereign wealth funds may redirect resources towards defence, domestic stabilization and economic protection at home. Investment in Africa would likely continue, but become more selective, politically conditional and tied to strategic interests rather than development goals.
African governments are not without bargaining power. Control over land, critical minerals and market access gives states real leverage, particularly when exercised collectively through institutions such as the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Morocco offers the clearest example. Rabat has linked Gulf investment in renewable energy to domestic industrial goals, including local manufacturing. Yet for most African states, this power remains constrained by debt, weak institutions and infrastructure shortages that make rapid Gulf financing difficult to refuse.
That imbalance is what makes the current moment decisive. If African states cannot coordinate their negotiating position through regional frameworks, such as the African Mining Vision (still inconsistently applied in practice), the AfCFTA and more harmonized investment policies, Gulf investment may evolve from a source of opportunity into a new architecture of dependency. Strategic assets will remain externally influenced, domestic value creation will remain weak and political autonomy may narrow alongside economic choice. The longer African governments postpone this reckoning, the harder it will become to prevent partnership from hardening into dependence.
