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Gulf investors anchor Morocco’s $35 billion green hydrogen drive

14 October 2026 Comments (0) Business

ACWA Power Khalladi wind farm turbines, northern Morocco

The ‘Morocco Offer’: A State-Led Bet on Clean Energy Export

Morocco has been developing a national green hydrogen strategy since 2021, positioning the kingdom as a future exporter of hydrogen derivatives to European markets. The strategy rests on the country’s considerable solar and wind resources: according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Morocco is on course to achieve the third lowest green hydrogen production costs in the world by 2050, with projected costs ranging between roughly $0.7 and $1.4 per kilogram, placing it alongside a handful of resource-rich nations in the most competitive tier.

The centrepiece of that strategy is what Rabat calls the ‘Morocco Offer,’ a state-led initiative launched in 2024 to channel large-scale foreign investment into hydrogen production and derivative industries, offering preferential access to public land and associated infrastructure. In March 2025, Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch chaired a steering committee that selected five investor groups for six specific projects, together valued at approximately $32 to $35 billion, according to AGBI and Morocco World News. The selected projects target production of green ammonia, e-fuels and clean steel, all within the kingdom’s southern provinces.

By February 2026, the programme moved from project selection to concrete land commitments. On 5 February, Akhannouch met in Rabat with representatives of all five investor groups to sign preliminary land reservation agreements. Each project gained access to up to 30,000 hectares, according to Ecofin Agency, enabling consortia to formally launch feasibility studies and move into active development.

Gulf Energy Companies Make Their Commitments Concrete

Two of the five selected investor groups carry direct Gulf capital, and their participation illustrates how the programme has become a practical Africa-Gulf energy partnership.

TAQA Morocco,  a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, joined forces with Spain’s Moeve in a consortium focused on green ammonia and industrial e-fuels. Under the arrangement, TAQA Morocco is responsible for renewable energy generation underpinning the project, while Moeve leads e-fuels production and marketing. In its initial phase, the consortium expects to produce around 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year, converting that output into approximately 560,000 tonnes of green ammonia for both domestic use and export, according to a Moeve press release issued in February 2026.

Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power entered the programme with its ‘Green Pearl’ project. The company is not a newcomer to Morocco: its total investments in the kingdom’s renewable energy sector already stand at close to $3 billion, making it one of the country’s largest foreign energy investors. As of late June 2026, ACWA Power’s management in Morocco confirmed to Asharq Business that the company is actively seeking to expand into green hydrogen, seawater desalination and energy storage, per Morocco World News. That statement, made during a visit to its Khalladi wind farm, signals a deepening commercial relationship rather than a one-off transaction.

The logic driving Gulf participation is strategic as well as financial. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are both diversifying their portfolios into clean-energy value chains expected to define the post-oil economy. Morocco, positioned at the western edge of North Africa with Atlantic deep-water ports and close proximity to European markets, offers geography well suited to that ambition. For Gulf energy majors, co-developing projects in Morocco is also a way to secure off-take relationships and supply chain positions before competitors do.

Local Stakes and the Industrialisation Imperative

The scale of the programme raises a question that runs through nearly every large infrastructure initiative on the continent: who captures the value?

Morocco’s government has framed the ‘Morocco Offer’ as more than an export platform. The kingdom’s hydrogen strategy envisions a domestic market of 4 terawatt hours alongside an export market of 10 TWh by 2030, requiring the construction of 6 gigawatts of new renewable capacity, as outlined by the Green Hydrogen Organisation. That production base is intended to feed domestic industries: green ammonia substituting for costly fertiliser imports, and clean hydrogen eventually feeding emerging steelmaking capacity. Morocco’s target of reaching 52% renewable electricity by 2030 adds domestic demand that reduces the risk of projects becoming purely export-oriented enclaves.

The feasibility study phase now under way will be critical in determining whether local industrialisation ambitions are written into binding contractual terms, including local content requirements, workforce development obligations and technology transfer commitments. Morocco’s Ministry of Energy Transition, led by Leïla Benali, has consistently stressed these conditions in parliamentary statements, though the detailed terms of individual project agreements remain commercially confidential.

The timeline is also demanding. Most projects target first exports by the late 2020s or early 2030s, coinciding with when the European Union’s hydrogen import strategy is expected to generate significant commercial pull. For Gulf investors experienced in financing long-horizon energy infrastructure in complex regulatory environments, such timelines are familiar terrain. For Morocco, the stakes reach further: the programme’s credibility as a global investment destination depends on whether the first projects are delivered on schedule and on the terms originally promised to investors and citizens alike.

What has changed in 2026 is that ambitions long confined to policy documents have been backed by signed land agreements, launched feasibility studies and companies committing capital on the record. ACWA Power’s latest signal of expanded ambitions in Morocco suggests that the Africa-Gulf green hydrogen axis is moving beyond the era of strategic announcements into one of practical implementation.

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Africa and the Gulf Are Redrawing the Global Tourism Map

28 September 2026 Comments (0) Business, Featured

For most of the past two decades, the Africa-Gulf aviation relationship was largely a story of stopovers. Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi became indispensable hubs for passengers transiting between African cities and European or Asian destinations, with Gulf carriers building formidable networks across the continent. Emirates serves more than 20 African countries; Qatar Airways operates routes to over 30 African destinations. But the character of these flows is changing. Increasingly, African travelers and Gulf visitors make direct bilateral trips for purposes beyond transit: business, leisure, medical care or family visits within diaspora communities.

This shift reflects structural changes on both sides. Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have invested heavily in domestic tourism infrastructure as part of broader economic transformation programs. Saudi Vision 2030 set an explicit target of attracting 150 million visitors annually by 2030, a figure cited by the Saudi Tourism Authority, and African source markets represent a largely untapped opportunity. The UAE has long drawn West and East African business communities to Dubai, and that foundation is now being extended to leisure and hospitality. On the African side, tourism ministers from Kenya to Morocco have recognized that Gulf visitors, who tend to record higher per-capita spending than many other source markets, merit deliberate policy attention.

Visa Reform and Route Openings as Strategic Moves

The clearest expression of this strategic intent is the wave of visa liberalization that has advanced across the continent. Kenya’s decision to abolish visa requirements for all nationalities, implemented in January 2024, is among the most sweeping examples. The Kenyan government framed the move as an explicit economic measure, anticipating higher tourist volumes and increased business travel. Rwanda’s policy of visa-free entry for all African nationals, in place since 2018, has contributed to positioning Kigali as a preferred conference and business travel destination, supported by investment in convention infrastructure and direct international services.

Airline route decisions track closely alongside these policy shifts. Low-cost Gulf carriers, including flydubai and Air Arabia, have extended their African footprints to cities beyond the established hubs of Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg. New or expanded services to Accra, Dar es Salaam, Kigali and other secondary cities reduce travel time and cost, broadening the pool of potential travelers in both directions. Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier by revenue and network, has simultaneously reinforced its Gulf services, using Addis Ababa as a competing hub. The result is a route map with more options and greater downward pressure on fares.

Gulf-based hospitality investment reinforces the same momentum. Regional sovereign wealth funds and hotel groups have gradually increased their exposure to African markets, from high-end lodges in East Africa to business hotels in North African capitals. Abu Dhabi’s ADQ holding company has built a portfolio of investments across African infrastructure and services, signaling a pattern that other Gulf vehicles are beginning to follow in the hospitality and real estate segments.

Local Entrepreneurs Navigate Opportunity and Concentration Risk

Behind the policy announcements and airline route maps, a more granular story is developing at the level of individual businesses and communities. African tour operators, hotel managers, restaurateurs and event organizers who serve international visitors are recalibrating their offerings to Gulf traveler habits, including language, dietary requirements and seasonal preferences. In Marrakech, Nairobi and Kigali, hospitality entrepreneurs report a measurable increase in Gulf visitors over the past two years and are adapting accordingly.

For local actors, the opportunity carries tangible economic weight. Tourism is a labor-intensive sector with documented multiplier effects across accommodation, food service, transport and cultural activities. The United Nations World Tourism Organization consistently ranks African tourism as one of the continent’s most accessible paths to foreign exchange earnings and formal employment. According to UNWTO data, Africa welcomed approximately 70 million international arrivals in 2019 before the pandemic disrupted travel; recovery has been uneven since then but generally stronger in markets that have combined visa liberalization with proactive marketing to new source countries.

The risks deserve clear-eyed attention. A high degree of dependence on a narrow set of source markets exposes destinations to volatility: a geopolitical rupture, a currency shift or a health crisis can rapidly suppress arrivals from a single country. African tourism boards and destination management organizations are increasingly aware of this, and many pursue multi-corridor strategies that treat Gulf visitor growth as a complement to intra-African and European demand rather than a replacement. Environmental sustainability and equitable benefit distribution remain live concerns, particularly in ecologically sensitive areas or wherever large hospitality investments bypass local ownership structures.

The Africa-Gulf Corridor at an Inflection Point

The Africa-Gulf tourism corridor is at an early but accelerating stage of development. Policy conditions are improving, aviation infrastructure is widening, and investment flows are beginning to reflect a genuinely bilateral logic rather than a one-way transit relationship. Whether these gains translate into broad-based economic benefit will depend on decisions made at national and local level: how governments reinvest tourism revenues and whether local businesses can position themselves to capture a meaningful share of visitor spending beyond the large hospitality groups. The potential of the corridor is real; its returns remain a matter of deliberate choice.

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Africa–Gulf: The New Payment Corridors Transforming Remittances

21 September 2026 Comments (0) Business

Mobile money transfer app on smartphone, Nairobi, Kenya

For the millions of African workers employed across Gulf Cooperation Council states, the act of sending money home is a routine but costly exercise. According to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database, the average cost of sending 200 dollars from a Gulf country to sub-Saharan Africa has consistently exceeded 7 percent of the transaction value, more than double the 3 percent target set under the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For a domestic worker in Riyadh or a construction technician in Dubai, those fees translate directly into less money reaching a family in Nairobi, Accra, or Lagos.

That cost structure is now under sustained pressure. Over the past several years, a growing cohort of African fintech firms and Gulf-based digital payment platforms have begun constructing interoperable rails that bypass the slow, expensive correspondent banking chains which have long dominated these corridors. The result is a structurally significant reconfiguration of how Africa and the Middle East exchange value, driven not by multilateral mandate but by the commercial logic of founders and regulators on both sides of the corridor.

Mobile money meets Gulf financial modernization

Africa’s mobile money infrastructure is one of the more consequential financial developments of the past two decades. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana, adult population penetration rates for mobile money wallets have surpassed 70 percent in some markets, according to the GSMA’s annual State of the Industry reports. Transaction volumes have grown at double-digit rates year-on-year across multiple markets. This domestic digitalization created an ecosystem capable of receiving international flows cheaply and near-instantly, provided the sending side could connect to it.

The Gulf has, in parallel, been modernizing its own financial infrastructure. Central banks in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar have invested in real-time gross settlement systems and open banking frameworks that lower barriers for fintech entrants. Some Gulf central banks have reported more than 100 percent growth in contactless and instant transfer volumes within single-year periods. The combination of Africa’s mobile-first depth and the Gulf’s regulatory ambition creates the structural conditions for cross-border interoperability.

The operational mechanism is typically an API-based connection linking an African mobile wallet to a Gulf bank account or digital wallet. When an African fintech secures a payment license in a Gulf jurisdiction, it can offer customers the ability to load a wallet in dirhams or riyals and push funds to a mobile money account in Kenyan shillings or Ghanaian cedis within minutes. Several pan-African payment companies have pursued precisely this licensing strategy, seeking regulatory approval in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to serve large African diaspora communities. Gulf-based neobanks, meanwhile, have begun targeting African workers as a core customer segment, given the volume and regularity of their outbound transfers.

Beyond remittances: SME trade and strategic autonomy

The significance of this infrastructure extends well beyond personal remittances. African small and medium enterprises importing goods from Gulf trading hubs, particularly from Dubai’s re-export markets, have historically relied on international wire transfers that can take several days to settle and carry fees that erode already thin margins. Digital payment rails enabling near-instant settlement change the economics of cross-border trade in concrete ways. The African Development Bank has repeatedly emphasized the importance of payment efficiency in enabling intra-regional and South-South commerce, noting persistent gaps that formal banking has been slow to fill.

There is also a geopolitical dimension that analysts are beginning to discuss. Historically, remittance routes between the Gulf and Africa have run through Western correspondent banks or global money transfer operators, which have held considerable pricing power and data visibility over these flows. As African and Gulf actors build their own rails, they gain operational autonomy over fees and routing decisions. This represents a gradual diversification of the financial connective tissue linking the two regions, with African and Gulf actors exercising greater agency than before.

The Islamic Development Bank and the Arab-Africa Trade Bridges program have signaled interest in formalizing such corridors further, linking payment infrastructure to trade finance and development objectives. Regulatory coordination between Gulf and African central banks, while still at an early stage, is beginning to surface as a topic in bilateral and multilateral financial diplomacy.

A corridor still under construction

The buildout of Africa-Gulf digital payment infrastructure remains a work in progress. Regulatory fragmentation across Africa’s 54 jurisdictions means that a license secured in Nigeria does not automatically confer access in Senegal or Ethiopia. Currency volatility in several African markets adds foreign exchange risk that technology alone cannot absorb. Consumer trust in new digital products, particularly among older or less digitally literate migrant workers, requires sustained investment in agent networks and customer education.

None of these obstacles is insurmountable. The trajectory of the sector, measured in licensing milestones and expanding transaction volumes, points clearly toward continued integration. What distinguishes this moment is that the architects of these corridors are not waiting for a global institution to hand them a blueprint. African fintech founders expanding into Gulf markets, Gulf payment operators targeting African diasporas and regulators in both regions adjusting their frameworks are collectively building a financial layer that serves hundreds of millions of people in ways the legacy system never prioritized.

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