1.5 million people are facing starvation in Sudan [photo credit: Norwegian Refugee Council]
The report focussed on the UAE’s growing power in the global food
system. The Emiratis have been involved for more than two decades in
efforts to ensure food security for their small and wealthy Gulf state.
That quest led them into Africa
where they reportedly have 14 land acquisitions in progress and 56
deals already done. One was signed with Sudan as early as the mid-70s
and the country remains a high priority target for further land
acquisitions.
As the report notes:
In the pursuit of its own food security, the UAE, like other Gulf
states, has been getting control of land to develop farm operations in
Sudan. Right now, two Emirati firms –International Holding Company
(IHC), the country’s largest listed corporation, and Jenaan – are
farming over 50,000 hectares there. In 2022, a deal was signed between
IHC and the DAL group – owned by one of Sudan’s wealthiest tycoons – to
develop an additional 162,000 ha of farmland in Abu Hamad, in the north.
This massive farm project, backed by the UAE government, will connect
to a brand-new port on the coast of Sudan to be built and operated by
the Abu Dhabi Ports Group. The economic stakes around this project are
mammoth. But so are the political ones. The current port of Sudan, which
the project will completely bypass, is run by the Sudanese government.
The deal
worth US$ 6 billion will see the Abu Amama port built north of the Port
of Sudan and will include an industrial zone, an international airport,
and the agricultural land in Abu Hamad. The deal was signed before the
civil war broke out so it is still nominally under the aegis of the
government. But the UAE continues to arm Hemedti’s RSF and is heavily
invested in him emerging as the winner.
He already has extensive engagements with the Emiratis through the
gold trade. Almost all of Africa’s gold both legal and smuggled is
transited through the Emirates. Hemedti’s family control the Jebel Amer gold mines
in Darfur where soldiers under his command carried out massacres from
2003 -2005 that have been recognised as genocidal. The RSF is carrying
out similar massacres today.
As the GRAIN investigation notes the Abu Amama port project is a partnership
between the Abu Dhabi ruling family and Sudan’s wealthiest businessman
Osama Daoud Abdellatif the founder and chairman of the DAL group. The
conglomerate has five divisions including DAL Agriculture and DAL Food.
The new port will see no expense spared in building a state of the
art facility, one that will provide intense and potentially lethal
competition to Port of Sudan: a win for Hemedti, Abdellatif and the
Emiratis and a blow to al-Burhan and his backers. Thus while the people
of Sudan are already plunged into food insecurity and famine as the two
generals battle for power one of the key outside players in the civil
war is busy achieving food security for itself while it enables the war
to continue. The GRAIN investigation ends with these words:
The mass starvation being waged in Sudan should be a terrible
reminder of why agricultural land deals meshed with geopolitical agendas
must end. It’s time to call the UAE, and its allies, to account.
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