A public dispute has erupted between the United Arab Emirates and the Financial Times over a series of investigative reports detailing the Gulf nation’s expanding military and economic influence across the African continent, with Abu Dhabi pushing back hard against accusations of pursuing expansionist, imperial-style goals in the region.
In an uncommon published rebuttal carried by the FT on Monday, Afra al-Hameli, the UAE’s director of strategic communications, said the country was disappointed by the newspaper’s framing of its growing footprint on the continent as evidence of “imperial ambition”. Hameli argued that characterizing negotiated partnerships between the UAE and fully sovereign African governments as a sign of expansionist overreach was deeply patronizing. She added that the narrative relied on outdated, harmful stereotypes that incorrectly paint African nations as passive targets of foreign manipulation, unable to independently set and pursue national priorities that serve their own people.
The UAE’s response comes after the FT ran two high-profile investigative reports that built on and corroborated prior reporting from Middle East Eye on Abu Dhabi’s expanding activities across Africa. The first article, published earlier this month, mapped the UAE’s sprawling web of interests spanning ports, logistics, agriculture, mining, finance, and security operations across dozens of African countries.
A subsequent follow-up investigation uncovered new details: a UAE-based security firm with close ties to the Abu Dhabi government recruited and deployed Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s ongoing brutal civil conflict. Multiple independent bodies, including United Nations experts and the United States government, have formally accused the RSF of committing genocide amid the war that broke out in 2023. While the UAE has repeatedly denied any backing for the paramilitary group, a growing body of open evidence from UN investigators, human rights organizations, and regional reporting confirms substantial Emirati support for the RSF. Previous investigations have also documented consistent arms transfers to the RSF facilitated by smuggling networks operating out of Libya, Chad, and the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland.
The FT’s August 4 investigation opened with a shocking revelation: in the opening days of Sudan’s war, RSF fighters stole 1.5 tonnes of gold bullion valued at approximately $100 million from Sudan’s state-owned Khartoum Gold Refinery. According to the report, the UAE provided military and civilian cargo aircraft to transport the stolen gold out of Sudan, with the shipment transiting through Chad and South Sudan before reaching its final destination. The investigation also mapped out a network of Emirati-built airstrips, naval outposts, and other military facilities across the region that play a key role in deploying mercenaries and facilitating the illicit gold trade out of Sudan. It corroborated prior evidence from UN experts, flight tracking analysts, and human rights groups documenting arms trafficking networks that have sustained the RSF’s campaign throughout the war.
On the economic and commercial front, the UAE has rapidly expanded its presence across Africa through major state-backed entities including DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports, securing major long-term concessions for port infrastructure and logistics networks across the continent. DP World currently operates or is developing ports, inland cargo terminals, and special economic free zones in 13 African countries, with distribution networks reaching into more than 25 African states. Emirati firms have also committed billions of dollars in investment to extractive industries across the continent: copper mining in Zambia, gold mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Mali, iron ore development in Mauritania, and tin extraction in eastern DRC. The FT concluded that the UAE has emerged as the most consequential foreign power to reshape the African continent’s economic and political landscape over the past decade.
Cameron Hudson, a former U.S. intelligence official and leading Africa analyst, pushed back against the UAE’s rebuttal, arguing that it contained a fundamental logical flaw. Writing on the social platform X, Hudson noted that two competing claims can be simultaneously true: “UAE can make mutually beneficial, strategic economic investments AND harbor imperial ambitions that leverage those investments for political and strategic gain. In fact, they are both true.”