Deep in the heart of the Sahara Desert, an industrial complex of greenhouses rises above the dunes. Running underneath, the sand is a 35-mile-long pipeline transporting water to the property in this remote part of Mauritania.
The owners? A firm from the United Arab Emirates. The goal? Farming blueberries.
In recent years, companies from the UAE have invested heavily in farming projects across Africa. There are currently 56 projects spanning millions of acres from Sudan to the project in Mauritania, which I reported from last year as part of a year-long investigation into the UAE’s agriculture acquisitions in Africa.
Despite their country’s staggering wealth, UAE officials have long known that food is the country’s Achilles’ heel. High temperatures, lack of water and infertile soil make growing most crops exceedingly challenging, meaning the UAE has to import about 90% of its food. Increasingly, Emirati agribusiness has looked to Africa to reduce its anxiety about food shortages, quietly preparing for distant climate shocks and conflicts by investing $11.9 billion in East African agriculture alone since 2009, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Now, as the war with Iran enters its third week, the entire strategy is being tested and cast into doubt. Iran has blocked the vast majority of ships from transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow strip of water between the UAE and Iran, through which 90% of the UAE’s food supply has historically flowed. The country holds six months of grain and staple stockpiles, but the blockage threatens fruit and vegetable supplies that depend on continuous imports, and experts warn that food shortages will occur if the war continues.
But the otherworldly scene at the farm in Mauritania revealed the extent of the UAE’s food challenges — even outside of war. The state-backed Emirati firm had said it was going to grow blueberries. But there were no blueberries in sight.
Why was one desert nation trying to grow fruit in another desert nation, over 6,000 miles away? Over the course of the past year, I’ve been investigating Emirati projects in Africa, seeking to understand why they are investing in remote sites where other companies would not dare, pushing through vast losses and, sometimes, allegations of land and water grabs.
Some farming investors say it is simply naivete, but others say the effort to transform arid land into arable is part of a long-standing Emirati tradition of projecting power and ingenuity, which in recent years has been a central part of its foreign policy effort to expand influence in Africa and beyond.
“The UAE is all about soft power,” said Naser Alsayed, a Middle East environmental expert at the think tank Chatham House. “When one state-owned entity invests, it doesn’t come alone.”
Before oil, Emiratis mainly depended on pearling — with divers plunging to depths of 6o feet to retrieve the shellfish and their valuable gems — and small-scale, oasis-fed agriculture. But as oil revenue filled government coffers from the 1960s, the first president of the newly formed UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, plowed vast funds into transforming the desert for modern, large-scale agriculture. “Give me agriculture, and I will give you civilization,” the founding father is often quoted as saying. Cynthia Gharios, a scholar at the University of Munster, says these projects were less about food security and more about projecting an image to the world of sovereignty and modernity — selling a country where oil wealth and ingenuity could transcend ecological limits.
But desert farming soon exhausted precious water supplies, and the state opted to abandon it. The idea of projecting Emirati sophistication through extreme farming was etched into the minds of elites, however, and the strategy shifted to purchasing land abroad, first experimenting in Sudan. This further crystallized during the 2008 price crisis, when food shortages rocked the UAE. In 2018, the UAE’s national food strategy announced it would become number one in the global food security index, an ambitious feat for a nation importing 90% of its food. As part of this, its footprint in Africa expanded into new areas — Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Morocco, Angola, Uganda, Zimbabwe.
But Emirati companies, eager to avoid accusations of neocolonial land grabbing and resource exploitation, promised to leverage their experience in hostile environment farming.
“We go to remote areas away from farmers, so they don’t say that we have taken their food or land,” Ahmed al-Falasi, a board member of Jenaan, an Emirati company with 250,000 acres across Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, told Reuters.
When it came to blueberries, the claims made by Elite Agro, a firm from Abu Dhabi with investments in Morocco, Egypt and Ethiopia, were big. On a government contract, the group said it would grow over 10,000 acres. If true, that would have made it the biggest single farm in Mauritania.
I wanted to see it. So, armed only with the name of a village in southern Mauritania, I set off through the arid landscape, occasionally interrupted by sparse, wispy acacia trees.
Many of these investments are shrouded in mystery. The estimate of 56 operations was put together by Land Matrix, a registry for large-scale land acquisitions, but it acknowledges that remote farms with a lack of company transparency make a true accounting of Emirati deals impossible. Access for journalists ranges from limited to nonexistent, adding a further challenge for anyone wanting to understand the reality behind the glitzy pictures of Emirati and African officials signing deals in boardrooms.
Under closer inspection, these estimates flatter the Emiratis. I’ve read countless documents and articles promising vast investments in Sierra Leone, Angola, Kenya and Tanzania, and nothing follows from them.
Even when deals progress into real-life production, it’s no guarantee that large-scale projects live up to the promises. In northern Senegal, I visited a company growing livestock fodder to export to the Gulf. Unpaid employees and rusting irrigation pipes above barren land were all that was left when the company went bust after one year. Herders and farmers still aren’t able to use the land.
“It’s the waste that hurts me,” said Doudou Ndiaye Mboup, a former electrician for African Agriculture. This is what people in the business of land prospecting call a zombie deal. It’s the worst possible outcome — no food for the Gulf, no food or employment for locals, while depriving them of land to grow food or raise livestock.
“Businesspeople walk away, but communities suffer,” said Rene Velvee, co-founder of the nonprofit Grain, which campaigns for land rights.
In Sudan, Land Matrix estimates that companies from across the Gulf have acquired 1.9 million acres, but many are failing to produce crops while blocking locals from using the land, according to analyses. One satellite review of large-scale land acquisitions estimates that only 4.2% of large-scale investments are producing food. Another study says 24% fail outright.
When I arrived in the village in Mauritania, no one — farmers, police, the mayor’s office — knew anything about this farm. The deputy mayor, dressed in flowing white robes, took pity on me and made some calls. Thirty minutes later, I was on my way to the alleged location, two hours north.
We turned off Mauritania’s only highway, where the deputy mayor said it was only a few more miles till our destination. After one hour down this gravel road, increasingly despondent about my chances, a tractor emerged out of a cloud of dust.
A rugged man stepped out of the cab, his head wrapped in a headscarf, curious about an unexpected visitor. As I asked him about the company, he looked at me vacantly. Only when I mentioned the Emiratis did a toothy grin appear, and he ordered me to follow his pickup. He zigzagged over sand dunes, navigated through herders and their cattle, and out of nowhere an industrial complex of greenhouses emerged from the desert.
The farm existed, but no blueberries were growing. The fine dust from the Sahara spoiled the delicate fruit, and the company had to grow hardier watermelons instead. Of the 10,000 acres leased, the greenhouses occupy barely 1%, the majority standing empty.
Experts and food investors greet the idea of growing blueberries and watermelons in the Mauritanian desert with astonishment, even ridicule. It doesn’t even contribute to the UAE’s food security, because the watermelons are exported to the U.K. and Europe.
An employee from Al Dahra, a sovereign wealth fund-backed agribusiness with 22,000 acres in the military-controlled Egyptian desert, says crops are sold on the global market, not transported back to the UAE.
It poses a question: What motivations lie behind such risky investments by companies claiming to pursue Emirati food security? The real harvest is influence, not food, said Martin Keurlitz, assistant professor at the American University of Beirut.
“Agriculture is a wonderful diplomacy tool,” Keurlitz explained. Farming projects, ostensibly promising benefits to the poor, are part of a wider strategy to forge stronger relations with elites of stronger nations. Projects don’t even need to materialize to be useful. Even an announcement of a deal is a foot in the door to more lucrative and influential industries — mining, logistics, energy.
Husam Mahjoub, the founder of Sudan Bukra, told me that just because farming projects in Sudan sit empty, it doesn’t mean the ventures were a failure. By investing in farmland, Emirati officials and business executives could see the inner workings of Sudanese politics. Gold exports from Sudan, worth more than $1 billion in 2023, now dwarf the food trade.
But this influence has a dark side, especially in Sudan. It’s widely understood that the Emiratis funded the insurgent Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, who have driven instability for decades, displacing 9.5 million people and committing atrocities in El Fasher late last year.
Presumed to be a bastion of safety in the Middle East, the Iran war will fundamentally reshape the UAE’s priorities at home and abroad. Gulf officials are already considering invoking force majeure on overseas investment contracts to ease financial pressures caused by the war.
The impact of increased food security concerns on risky agribusiness investments in Africa remains to be seen. Alsayed from Chatham House said the UAE should focus on expanding its already extensive logistics and port networks across the continent.
“The smartest strategy of their plan is the focus on ports,” Zayed said. Control of ports is control of food supplies, he added.
Meanwhile, Al Dahra, the sovereign wealth fund-owned agribusiness, shows no sign of slowing down. In January, the firm announced that it sought to become the world’s largest farming company, aiming to reach a footprint of 1.2 million acres worldwide. In February, it announced a deal of 45,000 acres in Tanzania.
As the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for the foreseeable future and food shipments are blocked, the UAE’s African breadbasket strategy is of little use — and would be even if it were more successful and less experimental. Despite the greenhouses in Mauritania and land in Egypt, the UAE is still a prisoner of geography, relying on fragile supply chains. One day, UAE food security and the metamorphosis of the African desert into lush green fields may be a reality. For now, it’s a mirage.
