Sudan

Discussions focused on ways to strengthen cooperation between the two parties and explore opportunities for partnership and investment in Sudan's productive and developmental sectors, particularly agriculture, food security, and agro-industries

In recent years the UAE has invested $60 billion in ports, airfields and logistical hubs up and down the coasts of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, building an archipelago of influence that ties geography directly to strategic ambition. Control of infrastructure, not territory, forms the foundation of this empire.

As Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf state's strategic farmland investments across Africa face a reality check

In Sudan and Ethiopia, Gulf capital has targeted large-scale agricultural estates, livestock production, and agro-processing, often through joint ventures with local elites or state authorities.

This famine in Sudan is not merely a product of the war that began in April 2023 but is the culmination of a decades-long structural shift: the systematic reorientation of Sudan’s fertile land and water toward export-oriented agriculture serving Gulf food-security systems.

Large-scale land leases to Gulf and domestic agribusiness investors have undermined rural livelihoods by cutting off grazing routes and limiting access to land, primarily used for cultivating sorghum and other staple food crops, Nisrin Elamin explains.

The Iraqi Fund for External Development (IFED) said that one of its four agricultural ventures in Sudan has stopped operating, without providing any reason for the halt.

Sudan proposed a trilateral partnership to combine Sudan’s fertile land, Pakistan’s agricultural expertise, and Saudi investment to launch impactful joint ventures.

In addition to the greenfield port north of Port Sudan, the project would have included a 400,000-acre agricultural development in the Nile region, hundreds of miles of new roadways, a large free trade zone

In recent years, Gulf economies have tackled their food dependencies not just by importing foodstuffs but through land enclosures, or the purchasing of agricultural land abroad, particularly in the Middle East, North and East Africa (but also as far as the United States and Australia)

With scarce arable land and water resources, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are expanding their agricultural diplomacy to improve food access and vying for agricultural cooperation with Africa

With 56 deals under its belt, the UAE has 14 more farmland acquisition deals in the pipeline in 2024, mainly in Africa