Qatar is an Arab Emirate located in Southwest Asia and known for its oil deposits. It has the world’s highest per capita GDP as assessed by the CIA World Factbook. Being a rich state, it is keen not just to achieve higher levels of growth itself, but also reach out to other nations and boost economic and trade ties with them. South Africa is one such country, and it scores over other nations due to its strategic location, which serves as a gateway to other African nations.
Mutual economic interests are conspicuous when one sees South African investment projects in Qatar and vice-versa. Many South African countries are operating in the gas sector of Qatar, and also in the food and contracting sector. The Oryx-GTL is a joint venture between SASOL and Qatar Petroleum and one of the large projects in Qatar involving $900 million. In the food segment, the South Africa based restaurant chain, Nando’s has three outlets in Doha.
Another African country to benefit from its ties with Qatar is Kenya, which has negotiated to lease 40,000 acres of land to Qatar. This is again a strategic move by a rich nation to lease land in a developing country and secure its won food supplies, as it is unable to grow its own. Qatar has only 1% of arable land and has no choice but import most of its food requirements. The land would be used for farming exclusively. Kenya has also been leasing out land to other countries for biofuels.
Africa is actively wooing Gulf nations by promoting itself as the world’s breadbasket. Qatar and many other Arab countries have to import most of their food requirements. To safeguard their future supplies they have started leasing land. Rwanda is another country that has lifted curbs on foreign direct investments to attract Qatar’s investment in its land for agricultural development.
In Zimbabwe, Venessia Petroleum, a company boosting Qatar’s energy sector, has invested a sum of $1.5 billion in an oil refinery in Harare. In Mozambique, Qatar is seriously considering making investments in the fields of tourism, agro-processing, infrastructure and energy.
In the African country of Algeria, a joint venture has been initiated between two Algerian companies, one company from Dubai and one Qatari company to construct an aluminum factory at a cost of $5 billion, which will be able to produce 700,000 tons of aluminum by the year 2012. This factory will substantially increase Algeria’s non-oil exports.
Source : Chinafrica
