Pearls, gas and a ruling house
Like its Gulf neighbours, Qatar lived for centuries on pearling, fishing and trade, its coast dotted with small settlements under the Al Thani family, who have ruled since the nineteenth century. It was a British protectorate until independence in 1971, and remained a poor and little-noticed place until offshore gas changed everything.
Qatar shares with Iran the North Field, the largest single gas reservoir in the world. Exports of liquefied natural gas from the 1990s made it one of the highest-income countries per head anywhere, wealth concentrated among a small citizen population served by a much larger migrant workforce.
A small state, a long reach
Qatar has used its wealth to build influence. It founded Al Jazeera in 1996, a broadcaster that transformed Arab media and gave much of the Global South, Africa included, an alternative to Western news networks. Its sovereign fund owns stakes in landmark companies and properties around the world, and its diplomats have brokered talks from Afghanistan to Darfur.
That assertiveness made enemies: from 2017 to 2021 Saudi Arabia and its allies blockaded Qatar, which weathered it and emerged more independent. In 2022 it staged the FIFA World Cup, the first in the Arab world — a tournament in which African teams featured, Morocco reaching the semi-finals as the first African and Arab side ever to do so, a milestone celebrated across the continent. The stadiums were built largely by South Asian and African migrant labour under the kafala system, and the deaths and conditions of those workers drew years of international scrutiny and some reform.
Wealth and its workers
Qatar is an absolute monarchy under the emir, with no elected legislature of real power and a population that is overwhelmingly foreign. Qatar Airways, like Emirates next door, has become one of the routes the African diaspora flies, connecting the continent through Doha to the wider world.
The country blends conservative Islamic custom with glass towers, world-class museums and Western universities. Its central challenge, beyond a warming climate and reliance on a single resource, is the gap between a wealthy citizenry and the migrant majority who built the state.