Gulf states

Where it is on record

Aid is drawn at each country's interior point, sized by seven years of commitments; the CRS carries no coordinates, so a country point is the honest place. Aramco's and the Gulf companies' pipelines are drawn as routes, the carriers' cables as dotted lines, power units in the map's status colours. Debt owed to the Gulf states is off until switched on.

The four providers are summed in the bubbles; the per-provider split is in the chart below. The power units are the map's own records with a Gulf company among the owners; the profile does not add records, it filters. DP World's and AD Ports' terminals, the other large Gulf footprint, are not in any of the map's layers.

Aid activities: OECD Creditor Reporting System

The four report to the OECD at activity level as non-DAC providers: the Emirates' ministry and its foundations, the Saudi Fund for Development and the King Salman centre, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, the Qatar Fund for Development and Qatar Charity. Together they give 2,759 distinct titles for 6,010 records. The loans are the Saudi and Kuwait funds' project lending for roads, dams, hospitals and power; the grants are budget support, humanitarian aid and the Emirates' and Qatar's charities' projects.

The purpose codes are the reliable part. The descriptions often name a region or a town (1,008 records mention one), but the CRS carries no coordinates, so the aid is drawn at country points and kept off the project map.

Records that build something

Purpose codes for transport, energy, water and the facility codes of health and education, plus titles that mention building, renovating or drilling: 1,802 records, USD 10,291 m, over the seven years.

Pipelines, power units and cables with a Gulf owner

The map's energy and connectivity layers carry an owner field; this table is those records filtered for a Gulf company. ACWA Power's wind and solar in Egypt, Morocco and South Africa and its share of the Benban park, AMEA Power's solar and wind from Egypt and Togo to Burkina Faso and Uganda, Masdar's and Abu Dhabi's funds' stakes, TAQA's Moroccan plants; the carriers in the cables are STC's center3, Mobily, du, Etisalat, Ooredoo and Zain.

Country-year series: net aid and debt

Two official series describe Gulf money in Africa one country and one year at a time, and the second comes twice. The DAC2a table gives net ODA by recipient, summed over the four. The World Bank's debt statistics give what each government owes creditors in the four states, and, separately, what it owes the Gulf-based funds, the Arab Fund, the OPEC Fund, the Islamic Development Bank and BADEA, which lend on the same terms from the same capitals. There is no investment-stock series: none of the four reports to the OECD's FDI collection.

Net ODA by recipient

Over 2010–2024 net ODA from the Gulf states to Africa came to USD 24.01 bn; Egypt received the most.

Debt owed to the Gulf states

World Bank International Debt Statistics; creditors in the four states, governments and banks together (counterparts 576, 566, 552, 561, summed) and the funds as multilateral creditors (921, 951, 976, 953, 980, summed), all public and publicly guaranteed debt. Sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed borrowing only; the Gulf sovereign funds' and companies' investments are outside the series.

How to read this page

One record is

In the aid tables, one CRS activity as each of the four reports it. In the energy table, one GEM power unit, one pipeline (its segments counted) or one cable, as the map carries them. In the series, one country and one year.

Status

GEM and TeleGeography records use the map's own mapping. Aid activities have no status.

Money

CRS commitments and disbursements are in current US dollars as reported. Net ODA is current prices. Debt is the World Bank's public and publicly guaranteed stock owed to the lender's creditors, the state and its banks together, as the debt page counts it, with the bilateral official part, the state's own claims, beside it. None of these is a project value and none is added to the map's lenders.

Location

Aid and the series are drawn at the country's interior point. Pipelines and cables are the map's routes, thinned; power units carry GEM's coordinates.

Not here, and why

• Investment stock by African country: none of the four reports to the OECD; the Emirates' and Saudi statistics publish Africa as a region, and the sovereign funds publish no portfolio by country.
• DP World's and AD Ports' terminals, the largest Gulf footprint on the continent's coasts, are in none of the map's layers; a port layer would be the way to show them.
• The Arab Coordination Group's project lists are the funds' own websites, one per fund, with no common machine-readable register.
• Oil and gas fields with Gulf operators are in GEM's extraction tracker, released through a request form only.

Sources and licences

• OECD, Creditor Reporting System, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar as providers (non-DAC reporters), pooled, activity-level microdata through the SDMX API; OECD terms of use, free reuse with attribution. OECD, DAC2a, net ODA by recipient (measure 206), current prices.
• World Bank, International Debt Statistics, source 6, counterpart areas 576, 566, 552, 561 (the states) and 921, 951, 976, 953, 980 (the funds), each group summed; CC BY 4.0, release of 3 Dec 2025.
• Global Energy Monitor, Global Integrated Power Tracker and Global Gas and Oil Infrastructure Trackers, as the map draws them; CC BY 4.0. TeleGeography, Submarine Cable Map; CC BY-SA 4.0.

Download

Everything on this page, with the aid aggregates by country, year, purpose and agency, the series per country and the filtered energy records: gulf.json.