UAE overtakes China as Africa’s biggest foreign investor
The UAE is now Africa’s biggest investor, in what is a major shift in foreign influence for the diverse continent.
According to MiddleEastMonitor on December 25th, Emirati companies pledged $110bn between 2019 and 2023, overtaking China as Africa’s largest foreign investor.
The UAE is looking to diversity its wealth from oil and gas, and move into other industries, such as mining and green energy.
International Resources Holding RSC Ltd of Abu Dhabi won a deal to invest over $1bn in Zambia’s Mopani copper mines in November 2023, according to Mining.com.
The conglomerate affiliated with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, founder-come-National Security Advisor of the UAE, now holds a 51 percent stake in the mines.
Of the investments, $72bn has filtered into renewable energy, nearly half of which is tied up in a hydrogen project in Mauritania which seems to have stalled and remains in the memorandum stage.
While much of Africa is dependent on foreign money, the UAE specifically has been criticised for lacking proper regulation of projects.
Ahmed Aboudouh, associate fellow at Chatham House, said: “African countries are in dire need of this money [for] their own energy transitions. And they plug huge holes, the Emirati investors, that the west failed to.”
“But at the same time they come in with less attention to labour rights, to environmental standards.”
According to the adhrb.org, the UAE intensified its influence by supporting conflicts in Libya and Somalia, as well as in Sudan, where its backing of the rebel Rapid Support Forces has exacerbated the bitter conflict.
After the acquisition of vast areas of agricultural land in Sudan and Ethiopia, the UAE was accused of displacing locals and threatening food security.
According to the Guardian, since 2022, the Dubai royal Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum has sold carbon credits from huge forests covering 20 percent of Zimbabwe, 10 percent of Liberia, 10 percent of Zambia and 8 percent of Tanzania.
MiddleEastMonitor, Mining.com, adhrb.org, Guardian
