Final Section
On the other hand, according to Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, a professor of political science at Sciences Po University in Paris and author of a new study on Dubai’s role as an offshore center for African capital, this city has also become a place for attracting and transferring African wealth, wealth that finds its way to Dubai due to low taxes, lenient regulatory environment, and confidentiality.
He says,
Africa is only part of Dubai’s story, but Dubai is a very large part of Africa’s story.
He claims that with increased scrutiny on financial centers in OECD countries, including London and Geneva, Dubai has become the main destination for laundering illicit income.
A spokesperson for the UAE government says the country is fully aware of its responsibility to protect the integrity of the global financial system and is committed to it.
According to a confidential estimate by one of Africa’s development agencies, Africans have invested a total of 306 billion dollars in Dubai’s real estate sector between 2019 and 2025, with about one-third of this amount coming from Nigerians.
A senior African financial executive, who wished to remain anonymous, says,
They have managed to attract a massive flow of African capital, capital whose owners can no longer place their money in old colonial financial centers and now invest in real estate and other assets in Dubai, where they can stay away from controls and restrictions.
According to Soares de Oliveira, much of this financial activity is carried out by the same bankers who previously operated in Western financial centers, but Dubai’s more lenient culture has also drawn them in.
The African financial executive says about Dubai,
They are just acting smartly. If they didn’t do it themselves, someone else would have done it before, and someone else was thinking of doing it, so why shouldn’t they do it themselves?
The withdrawal of donors and Western countries from Africa has created a void that mid-level powers are filling. However, the UAE is not the only player in this arena; Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other countries have also joined this competition, and the competition is getting fiercer by the day.
But among these mid-level powers, the Gulf countries, especially the UAE, have played the most active role.
Ardemagni, an Italian researcher, says,
The UAE has established strong alliances and relationships in many African countries, both at the governmental level and with other actors. They have proven to be very flexible in facing changes and transformations.
The new challenge for the UAE is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, an action that has cut the key port of Jebel Ali, DP World, off from access to sea routes. Jebel Ali is considered the cornerstone of the UAE’s global logistics network.
Nevertheless, analysts believe that the UAE’s ambitions in the African continent will continue even if a war breaks out near its borders.
On the other hand, Mehari Taddele Maru, an Ethiopian researcher, argues that the UAE’s influence over Western powers—an influence gained through a shared alliance with Israel, opposition to Islamist groups, oil-dollar investments, and aggressive lobbying—has allowed the country to act in Africa as it wishes.
Mehari Taddele Maru, along with many other academics, activists, and researchers, hopes that the militarized and corporate-driven approach that marked the beginning of the UAE’s entry into Africa will be moderated in the future.
He says,
The UAE is a mid-level power that does not follow the usual norms of interaction and international relations.
He further explains the dilemma faced by African leaders as follows,
The issue is how to restrain their behavior while also attracting their investments.
In conclusion, he says,
They are our neighbors; they will be present here. But how can the benefits of this presence be maximized for countries, not for specific individuals or opportunists and profiteers?