Africa and the Arab World

Over the past year, as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and the global Anti-Blackness conversation, I have researched and written extensively about racism in the Middle East and North Africa.

A commerical and fishing port  Essaouira, Morocco. Picture: Maike Hencke.

The history between the two regions is interesting and deserves to be examined closely. Unfortunately, resources and documents exploring the two regions' history are limited, making the relationship difficult to understand and explain.

As part of LevantX’s ongoing series on the MENA, I will try to highlight a few key aspects of Arab-Africa relations, both during the decolonisation period and the present day.

A long and complex history

Arabs and Africans have a long history of solidarity and mutual support. During the decolonisation period, Arab countries supported the liberation of African countries. Notably, this included a boycott of South Africa for their treatment of their Black citizens during the Apartheid era.

In turn, African countries showed solidarity with Arabs in their conflict with Israel. This form of solidarity was very integral in the entire region gaining its independence from colonial powers.

This solidarity can be seen today, when several African states objected to the unilateral decision by the African Union Commission Chair to grant observer status to the State of Israel after the eruption of the Israeli-Palestine Crisis in May of this year.

During Ramadan, violence broke out between Palestinian citizens and Israeli settlors after months of demonstrations and escalating tension resulting from the eviction notices given to Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah—a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

Like everyone else around the world, I watched the violence erupt and the world’s reactions to this new outbreak. Social media was flooded with videos and messages supporting either Palestine or Israeli with others calling for peace and understanding. What was interesting was that this solidarity didn't stop with just African citizens, but spread to their African-American counterparts. Actress Viola Davis and Congresswoman Cori Bush were vocal examples of members of the African-American community supporting the Palestinian cause.

When we look at the two regions, we can't discuss their relations without examining Arab participation in the enslavement of Africans during the East African slave trade.

Over several centuries, East Africans were brutally enslaved and sold by Arabs to the Middle East, Europe and the Americas via the Sahara Desert and the Indian Ocean.  The number of people sold and transported is hotly disputed, but is likely to range in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions.

Their impact on the Middle Easts economic and cultural development cannot be understated, as they were forced to work on on crucial agricultural projects that fed both coin-purses and stomachs, and provided several new groups of peoples to different regions, notably to the North-Eastern sphere of Africa.

The Arabisation of Africa and the spread of Islam have had a permanent impact on Africans that we can feel to this day and are feeding racism against Black people in Arab societies. The communities lack of acknowledgment and discussion of this part of history makes it difficult to heal from this past. 

Trade and Economic Relations

The difficult history between the two regions did not stop them from creating and developing economic ties. The African continent provides an excellent opportunity for investment with its natural resources and young, hardworking population. The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) - which aims to create a single market for goods and services – has been described as ‘the largest free trade area in the world’ by the World Bank and will likely ease the trade flow between African countries. 

In the last few years, Arab countries have had more involvement in the continent by investing heavily in various projects and leading peace negotiations in East Africa. Moreover, Gulf countries have specifically increased their investments massively in the last ten years. The United Arab Emirates, for example, is one of the continent’s largest Arab investors. In 2020 it launched a $500 million project, the Consortium for Africa, which focuses on youth development and digitisation opportunities. 

The UAE investments in African reached $50 billion in 2019 and US$40.7 billion in the first nine months of 2020, according to Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of State for Foreign Trade.

An Industrial Area in  Nairobi, Kenya. Picture: Lazarus Marson.

Dubai Ports World (DP World) are also expanding their footprint in Africa, as it recently offered to buy up 12.7bn Rand ($890 million) worth of shares in South Africa’s Imperial Logistics, an important technology company with links throughout the southern cone of the continent. Another deal occurred in May 2016, when DP World signed a deal worth $422 million with the government of Somaliland to operate a regional trade and logistics hub at the Port of Berbera, in addition to its other port assets in Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

The UAE is not the only Gulf state investing in the area. According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia announced in May 2021 the establishment of a $1 billion investment in African countries to support their recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. Saudi Arabia was the fifth largest investing country in the continent as of 2019, with most of its investment focused on agriculture, water, and energy.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are not the only Gulf countries looking for opportunities in the continent. Kuwait has also invested through its telecommunication companies, while Qatar invests in agriculture, infrastructure projects, and more.

Could Arabs support to African countries economically and financially, help in re-establishing a solid relationship between the two regions? Or is the dark history will keep appearing without a proper acknowledgment and an apology? And what would the normalisation of relations with Israel will reflect in the region? Will Africa and the Middle East emerge as equals or will one assert superiority over the other? These are questions that will be observed over the coming years and decades. Whilst the future remains unwritten, the ink of history leaves a dark stain over their relationship. We can only hope that the lessons of the past will be learnt, this time.