United Arab Emirates investments in Africa: The plague
Ibrahim Onour
Professor of Economics
University of Khartoum
Africa is blessed with natural resources and generously endowed with productive land and with valuable natural resources, which include renewable resources (such as water, forestry, and fisheries) and non-renewable resources (minerals, gas, and oil). A striking feature of natural resources in Affrica is diversity and multiplicity of stakeholders involved in the operations of mineral resource production and manufacturing .
Natural resources are central to the livelihoods of the poor rural majority and these resources constitute a principal source of public revenue and national wealth. However, a number of African countries lured by the Gulf petro dollar inflows hosted so-called United Arab Emirates (UAE) investments which plummeted these countries into devastating internal conflicts and corrupt governance system, that turned the abundant natural resources into a curse or plague. The resource curse refers to a situation whereby a country has an export-driven natural resources sector that generates large revenues for governments but leads paradoxically to economic declines and political instability. It is commonly used to describe the negative development outcomes associated with non-renewable extractive resources (gold, petroleum and other minerals).
The causes of resource curse in those countries have been echoed lately by prominent politicians and academics as they assert that the strategy of UAE is to support politically corrupt African leaders and persue destructive resource extraction in those countries. A point supporting this view is that, in an interview with radio France internationale, more recently Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar has criticized the UAE, accusing it of exploiting its muti-billion dollar investments in Africa for military expansion motives, stating that: “These investments are not purely economic projects, but are interconnected with military objectives that threaten the sovereignty and stability of African countries” he said. Furthermore,
leaked confidential UN report raised fresh questions over the UAE’s role in the devastating conflict in Sudan. The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries (RSF and SPLA north) via neighboring Chad and republic of South Sudan. An internal report – marked highly confidential and seen by the Guardian – detected “multiple flights from the UAE in which transport planes made apparently deliberate attempts to avoid detection as they flew into bases in Chad where arms smuggling across the border into Sudan has been monitored”. The current war in Sudan has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 12 million people.
The 14-page report – completed last November and sent to the Sudan sanctions committee of the UN Security Council – was written by a panel of five UN experts who “documented a consistent pattern of Ilyushin Il-76TD cargo flights originating from the United Arab Emirates” into Chad, from where they identified at least three overland routes potentially used for transporting weapons into neighboring Sudan.
They found that the cargo flights from airports in the UAE to Chad were so regular that, in effect, they had created a “new regional air bridge”.
They noted that flights demonstrated peculiarities, with planes often disappearing for “crucial segments” of their journey, a pattern that the experts said “raised questions of possible covert operations”.
The UAE’s role in the Somali civil war is also noticeable in form of military support, and economic aid. The UAE has supported the Somali government and its allies in the fight against rebellion groups against the government. This support includes training and funding for security forces, as well as providing military equipment and advisors.
In general, the apparent positive association between UAE investment flows to Africa and internal conflicts in countries like: Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Yamen, Tchad, Republic of South Sudan, Algeria, and Djibouti, emanates from UAE conviction that the more weaker and corrupt is a government, the more easier for UAE to control and own the hosting country’s mineral resources and sea ports with less cost.
We implore the African Union to stop UAE plundering the African natural resources, and exposing the critical nexus between political instability and the inflows of UAE investments to Africa.