For decades, African agriculture paid the price of extractive models designed elsewhere, for others. Financial predation, grabbing of arable land, export crops with no local benefits: the continent, though endowed with immense resources, remained trapped in chronic food dependency, while its farmers saw their fate decided far from their fields.
These practices, inherited from neocolonial logic, now belong to the past. In response, the United Arab Emirates is imposing a major strategic break. The vision deployed by Abu Dhabi replaces land grabbing with a model of technological investment based on local processing and skills-sharing.
The difference is significant. Where the old model left with the raw harvest, the new approach seeks to keep added value on the continent. Processing locally means creating jobs, stabilizing producers’ incomes, reducing post-harvest losses, and bringing products closer to local markets.
It also means building sustainable value chains, in which the farmer is no longer a mere supplier of raw materials but a full player in the economy.
The technological component is just as decisive. Water-saving irrigation, climate-adapted seeds, mechanization, precision agriculture, digital tools: this expertise, tested in the arid conditions of the Emirates, finds a natural field of application in Africa.
But the essential thing lies in its transmission. Training technicians, supporting cooperatives, strengthening local capacities: skills-sharing turns a one-off investment into lasting autonomy.
This orientation responds to a deep aspiration of African peoples, who demand partnerships between equals, respectful of their sovereignty and their priorities. It echoes the message carried by many leaders on the continent: food sovereignty is not a slogan, but the condition of nations’ dignity and stability. A people that feeds itself through its own work will not allow its conduct to be dictated.
Success will be measured on the ground, by harvests, factories installed, jobs created, and skills transferred. But the direction is clear: turn the page on a bygone past. By choosing technology, local processing, and training rather than land grabbing, Abu Dhabi opens a path that other partners would do well to follow: that of cooperation in which Africa is no longer plundered, but an actor in its own prosperity.
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