The African continent has become a focus for international actors: resources and new geopolitical objectives. At least that’s how it seemed in recent years. China has invested billions of dollars in roads and railways on the continent. Russia sends weapons and fighters to fragile states. US diplomats are traveling through Africa like they haven’t in a long time. Their European colleagues do the same, they want fewer irregular migrants and more African natural gas to replace Russian resources.
Here, however, the Eurocentric view quickly becomes a dead end. Many of the external actors in Africa are not great powers, politically or economically. They are ambitious middle powers that find new scope after the end of the bipolar world order, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia or India.
The Gulf states in particular have made significant investments in African countries, particularly in the areas of infrastructure, energy and agriculture. They have made large investments in ports, airports and road projects in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. These investments contribute to economic development in Africa and create jobs, but can also have environmental impacts and cause social tensions, especially if local workers are not sufficiently integrated.
Some Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, provide significant development and humanitarian assistance to African countries. These efforts can improve the living conditions of many people, especially in crisis situations such as conflicts and natural disasters. They are important trading partners for many African countries, especially in the area of oil and gas exports. Some African countries also export raw materials and agricultural products to the Gulf region. These trade relationships can contribute to the diversification of economies, but also pose risks of interdependence and trade imbalances.
Gulf countries use their political influence in international forums to advance their interests in African affairs. This can extend to areas such as peacekeeping, security cooperation and economic cooperation. Some countries, such as Egypt and Sudan, have close political ties with Gulf states, which may influence their regional positions. Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular have sought to expand their religious influence in Africa by supporting the construction of mosques, funding religious education programs and promoting a conservative interpretation of Islam. This can lead to social and religious tensions and affect the influence of other religious movements in Africa. The two states are also increasingly involved in security cooperation with African countries, particularly in the fight against terrorism and in providing security assistance. This can strengthen the fight against extremist groups, but also poses risks related to human rights violations and the expansion of the influence of authoritarian regimes.
Perhaps the most powerful middle power in this scramble for influence is clearly the United Arab Emirates – rich in oil, a global financial hub thanks to the glittering metropolis of Dubai, so upgraded that military experts call the country “Little Sparta”.
The emirate is investing billions of dollars in Africa, it is mediating in some regional conflicts, but it is also fomenting some. The Emirates’ commitment is therefore a central challenge for the West: the world order is no longer uni- or bipolar. China and Russia have become more dangerous. But alongside the two major rivals, middle powers have become unpredictable. Even if they are traditional allies of the West like the UAE. It is one of the major challenges in the next decades.
Along with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates are traditionally the US’s most important military partner in the Arab world. They have taken part in most military operations in recent decades. 5,000 US military personnel are stationed in the Emirates. At the same time, the Emirates have emancipated themselves. After the start of the Ukraine war, they abstained from voting on an American resolution condemning the Russian attack. They see themselves as mediators between the West and Russia. At the beginning of the year they joined the Brics alliance, which includes Russia and China.
The new independence of the Emirates and other central powers has consequences. The West must contain Russia and China while keeping an eye on the upstarts. Because these can have just as destabilizing effects. There are not many options for dealing with the ambitious middle powers. The West is not as strong as it once was. He has to come to terms. That means looking for opportunities to cooperate with regional middle powers.
Over the last decade, the Emirates have developed into a regional power that is expanding further and further across the Arabian Peninsula. The active foreign policy was initially strongly driven by political fears: After the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, the leadership feared that democrats or Islamists would become too powerful in the Arab world – and in the Emirates.
Sub-Saharan Africa was also an early target of Emirati ambitions due to its geographical proximity. Especially the Horn of Africa, located opposite the Arabian Peninsula and with a long coastline on the Red Sea, which is extremely important for global freight traffic. The Emirates poured billions of dollars into modernizing and expanding ports in the region. They established a military base in Eritrea and planned another in the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland.
But the influence of the Emirates has long since extended beyond the Horn of Africa. In the past decade, it has become the fourth largest investor on the African continent – after China, the EU states and the US. They also invested in ports in southern and western Africa. They export bauxite from Guinea and have bought huge agricultural areas in various countries to ensure supplies for the emirates, which rely on food imports.
African countries can use investments, African countries could also learn from the Emirates. For example, how to use resource wealth to build an efficiently functioning state: In most resource-rich African countries, oil or gold have only made a narrow elite rich. The Emirates have also achieved political merit. For example, in 2018 they brokered peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, two countries that had fought a devastating border war two decades earlier and had been stalking each other ever since.
But the Emirates can also be a destabilizing factor in Africa. Their geopolitical ambition has also fueled some of the continent’s most brutal conflicts. Sometimes using methods similar to those used in Russia. The best example is one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. For almost a year now, a war has been going on in Sudan, Africa’s third largest country, which has received little attention. The country’s army fights with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a rich and powerful militia that has its origins in the Darfur genocide at the beginning of the new millennium. The warring parties destroyed the capital Khartoum and killed thousands of people. Over ten million people are displaced – more than in any other country.
Recently, The New York Times reported on a covert operation in which the Emirates supplied drones and weapons to the RSF in Sudan and evacuated injured RSF fighters, some of whom received treatment in the Emirates. The operation was coordinated from an airfield in neighboring Chad, where Emirati cargo planes landed almost daily. The government denied the account and said it was humanitarian aid for some of the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who have fled to Chad. But UN researchers described the same processes.
The Sudan war is not the first time that the Emirates has intervened in an African conflict. In Libya, they sided with the warlord Khalifa Haftar, who is fighting the government in Tripoli. They also supplied him with weapons, circumventing an embargo imposed by the UN Security Council in 2011. They acted in tandem with Russia, a second close ally of Haftar.
In Ethiopia, the UAE supported a government waging war against the breakaway Tigray region in the north of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the region between 2020 and 2022, many of them from starvation. The Emirates also supplied drones and weapons here, helping to turn a war that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s central government was in danger of losing.
What is the logic of this war aid? Some experts believe it is strongly driven by geopolitical rivalries, especially those with other Arab countries, which have become more pronounced in recent years. In Sudan, for example, Egypt supports the regular armed forces, the opposing side of the RSF. But ultimately the interesting question is not where the UAE’s desire for recognition comes from, but what it says about the global geopolitical structure. Because one can learn a lot about the new role of middle powers. Many of them – Turkey, for example, or South Africa – choose their alliances freely and on a case-by-case basis. They sometimes ally themselves with one camp, sometimes with the other.
There is something like a race in Africa. But it is more unpredictable than one might think. More actors are taking part than before. And it is often forgotten that Africans have also seen through the new world order. Countries like South Africa, which navigate in a similar way to the Emirates, are not afraid to sometimes side with Russia and sometimes with the US for their own benefit. The new middle powers are becoming more influential. They are uncomfortable partners. But essential ones.
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