Dubai, the business capital of Africa

Growing numbers of Africa-focused companies are basing themselves in the emirate

 

 

                             Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai (Paul Cochrane)

 

 

Middle East Eye: For hundreds of years, the business capitals of Africa were in Europe - in London, Paris, Berlin and Lisbon.

Despite decolonisation, money still flows from Africa to European financial hubs, but over the past decade business headquarters have geographically shifted. Not back to Africa, but to another former British colony: Dubai.

There are now more than 21,000 African companies in Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It's a number that has increased by over a quarter since 2017, according to Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry figures.     

The emirate has also attracted 45 Middle East and Africa headquarters of multinational companies - compared to just 26 in Africa, according to a 2018 report by Infomineo, a data and research outsourcing provider specialising in Africa and the Middle East.

 

 

 To read the rest go to: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-dubai-africa-business-capital

Saudi Arabia’s ‘Programme HQ’: Can Riyadh rival Dubai as a business hub?

 Plans to make access to mega-project contracts conditional on companies establishing regional headquarters in the kingdom are ambitious but ambiguous

 

Middle East Eye: In the pre-pandemic days of globalisation, countries competing in emerging markets were often engaged in a "race to the bottom" to attract multinational companies, which typically involved offering them incentives such as tax breaks and favourable labour laws.

More recently, governments with large enough economies have opted for the stick-over-the-carrot approach in allowing companies to set up shop, often for political objectives.

Last year, for instance, Turkey passed a law requiring any social media platform based abroad with over one million daily Turkish users to set up a representative office in the country.

Saudi Arabia is taking a leaf from the same playbook as it grapples with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and embarks on its ambitious Vision 2030 plans.

In mid-February, Minister of Investment Khalid al-Falih announced that any company seeking contracts with the government, state-owned firms and the Public Investment Fund (PIF, the sovereign wealth fund) will have to base its regional headquarters in the kingdom by 2024.

Saudi Arabia is hoping that the allure of being the Middle East’s biggest economy, with hundreds of billions of dollars earmarked for mega-projects over the coming decades, will force companies to comply.

“There was surprise at the announcement, and there are some merchant families that will not be happy,” said Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based consultancy.

“But at the same time, others will see the benefit of such a regulation, and in how the city states of the Arabian peninsula interact with each other for recovery purposes. Because of Covid-19, they are rebooting and restructuring their economies."

The requirement, called “Programme HQ”, is still at the discussion phase, with “as many questions as answers. It is a reminder of the intense competition for investment within the Gulf Cooperation Council,” said Rachel Ziemba, a non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based institute.

To read the rest go to: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-uae-dubai-programme-hq-rival-business-hub

 

Red Sea cables: How UK and US spy agencies listen to the Middle East

 An expanding network of undersea fibre optic cables from the Mediterranean to the Gulf has made surveillance of regional communications easier than ever

 

The Mediterranean viewed from the Troodos Mountains, Cyprus (Paul Cochrane)

Middle East Eye: The growth of Middle Eastern fibre optic cable networks has given Western signals intelligence agencies unprecedented access to the region’s data and communications traffic.

“There is no question that, in the broadest sense, from Port Said [in Egypt] to Oman is one of the greatest areas for telecommunications traffic and therefore surveillance. Everything about the Middle East goes through that region except for the odd link through Turkey,” said Duncan Campbell, an investigative journalist specialising in surveillance since 1975.

The Five Eyes, a signals intelligence (SIGINT) alliance of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, has been snooping on the Middle East since the network was formed during the Second World War.

The key players are the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), utilising both known and secret facilities in the region to collect data.

The Middle East is a hotbed of surveillance for obvious reasons: its strategic political-economic importance, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and political divisions between the allies of the Five Eyes and their adversaries, from militant groups to countries such as Iran and Syria.

While all conventional forms of surveillance are carried out, from airspace surveillance to tapping phone lines, the region is a strategic asset for mass surveillance due to the current routes of fibre optic cables.

“The importance of cables is still largely unknown by the average person. They think smartphones are wireless and it goes through the air but they don’t realise it is through cables,” said Alan Mauldin, research director at telecommunications research firm TeleGeography in Washington.

Spy agencies have tapped into fibre optic cables to intercept vast volumes of data, from phone calls to the content of emails, to web browsing history and metadata. Financial, military and government data also passes through cables.

To read the rest go to: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/red-sea-cables-how-us-uk-spy-agencies-listen-middle-east

 

'Digital Suez': How the internet flows through Egypt - and why Google could change the Middle East

Most web traffic between Europe and Asia passes through fibre optic cables crossing Egypt. Could a proposed new route through Israel and Saudi Arabia break the 'Red Sea bottleneck'?

 

Most internet traffic between Europe, the Middle East and Asia passes through Egypt (MEE/Illustration by Mohamad Elaasar)

 

Middle East Eye: There are only a few historically strategic transit points around the Mediterranean Sea: the Strait of Gibraltar, the Bosphorus, and the Suez Canal.

While the Suez Canal has been a jewel in Egypt’s crown since 1869, netting the country some $5.6bn in revenues in 2020, it accounts for just eight percent of world cargo shipments.

But Egypt’s location as a fibre optic cable hub, linking Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, means up to 30 percent of the global population’s internet connectivity transits through the country.

“If you want to route cables between Europe and the Middle East to India, where’s the easiest way to go? It is via Egypt, as there’s the least amount of land to cross,” says Alan Mauldin, research director at telecommunications research firm TeleGeography in Washington DC.

Egypt, through its state-owned monopoly Telecom Egypt (TE), has successfully capitalised on its position to entice cable operators to transit the country.

“It is one of Egypt’s trump cards, like the Pyramids, which never goes out of fashion. They are used to making business out of transit and tourism, but now they’re doing it with data. It is a digital Suez canal, which trades on its geopolitical position,” Hugh Miles, founder of Arab Digest, in Cairo, told Middle East Eye.

There are 10 cable landing stations on Egypt’s Mediterranean and Red Sea coastlines, and some 15 terrestrial crossing routes across the country, of which 10 are operated by the Egyptian telecom giant, spanning a region stretching from the Mediterranean as far as Singapore, according to TE.

 

To read the rest go to:  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-digital-internet-flow-change-middle-east

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dubai, Switzerland, London: How the UAE became a smuggling hub for 'blood gold'

Emirates urged to clean up their act amid numerous reports about role in dirty gold trading

 

                                         Credit: Stevebidmead/Wikicommons

 

Middle East Eye: There are no mines under Dubai's sands with artisanal miners or children toiling away trying to strike gold. But there is the Dubai Gold Souk and refineries that vie with the largest global operations as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) strives to expand its position as a major gold hub. 

In recent years, the UAE, with Dubai in particular, has established itself as one the largest and fastest-growing marketplaces for the precious metal, with imports rising by 58 percent per annum to more than $27bn in 2018, according to data collated by the Observatory for Economic Complexity.  

With no local gold to tap, unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the UAE has to import gold from wherever it can, whether it be legitimately, smuggled with no questions asked, sourced from conflict zones, or linked to organised crime.

Gold has become so important to Dubai's economy that it is the emirate's highest value external trade item, ahead of mobile phones, jewellery, petroleum products and diamonds, according to Dubai Customs.

And it is the UAE's largest export after oil, exporting $17.7bn in 2019. Gold's importance has only increased as Dubai's oil reserves have dwindled and the UAE has tried to diversify its economy.

To read the rest go to: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dubai-switzerland-london-how-uae-became-smuggling-hub-blood-gold