Pearls, trucial coast and oil
For centuries the coast lived on pearl diving, fishing and dhow trade across the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. In the nineteenth century Britain signed treaties with the local sheikhs — the Trucial States — to police piracy and secure the route to India. Pearling collapsed in the 1930s, and poverty deepened until oil was found.
When Britain withdrew from the Gulf, six emirates federated on 2 December 1971 under Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, with a seventh, Ras al-Khaimah, joining in 1972. Oil revenue, concentrated in Abu Dhabi, funded rapid development; Dubai, with less oil, bet on trade, ports and tourism instead.
Gulf capital in Africa
The Emirates are among the most active foreign investors in Africa, and the relationship is layered. DP World, the Dubai state ports operator, runs or has built terminals from Dakar to Berbera and has clashed with governments over concessions, most bitterly at Doraleh in Djibouti. Emirati money flows into African agriculture, mining, telecoms and, increasingly, gold.
For the diaspora the connection is also personal. Emirates and its Dubai hub have become one of the main ways Africans fly between the continent and the wider world, and Dubai a place where African traders buy stock and remit earnings home. The other side of the boom is the labour question: the construction and service economy rests on migrant workers, many African and South Asian, employed under the kafala sponsorship system that ties a worker's status to an employer and has drawn sustained criticism.
A federation of contrasts
The UAE is a federation, but power is uneven: Abu Dhabi holds most of the oil and the presidency, Dubai the commercial spotlight. It has diversified into aviation, logistics, real estate and finance, hosted a UN climate summit in 2023, and normalised relations with Israel in 2020.
It is socially liberal by regional standards yet politically closed, with no elected legislature of real power and tight limits on dissent. Its citizens are a wealthy minority; most residents are foreign workers without a path to citizenship.