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Energy giant Saudi Aramco has signed $25bn worth of contracts to expand its natural gas facilities in the kingdom, while also making a series of oil and gas discoveries in the Eastern Province and Empty Quarter, in a clear sign that the kingdom remains committed to fully exploiting its hydrocarbon reserves.

Sheikh Abdelaziz Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has been named chairman of the Al-Quds Fund and Endowment’s board of trustees, replacing Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal, who has been named honorary chairman of the fund.

United Al-Saqer Group, best known for its car dealerships, has bought into UK visual effects studio DNEG – the second major UAE-UK media deal in a matter of months.

Potential deals in Australia and Rwanda would add to a portfolio that already includes stakes in British Airways, Cathay Pacific and China Southern, and is part of a strategy to boost traffic through Doha’s Hamad International Airport.

Role: Minister of state for interior affairs Sheikh Abdelaziz was appointed deputy commander of the Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) in 2017. In an early-2020 reshuffle, he was promoted to Lekhwiya commander and Ministry of Interior undersecretary.

Dubai-based logistics giant DP World has created an investment joint venture with UK development finance institution CDC Group. DP World will contribute its stakes in the ports of Dakar in Senegal, Sokhna in Egypt and Berbera in the unrecognised Republic of Somaliland to the venture and says it expects to invest a further $1bn through the platform in the coming years.

The extent of co-operation between the UAE and Egypt was evident during a recent training exercise involving all elements of the Egyptian armed forces, which featured UAE-made guided bombs. Exercise Qader 21 was held to coincide with the opening of the 3 July Naval Base at Ras Gargoub, some 300km west of Alexandria. President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi’s guest of honour at the inauguration ceremony was Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ).

Abu Dhabi continues to use both hard and soft power tools to assert its influence in its near abroad, with a fluid approach to diplomacy and military deployments that aims to counter what it sees as the Muslim Brotherhood’s dangerous influence while exploiting commercial opportunities in new frontiers.

The UAE has agreed to build and occupy an airbase near the Somaliland port of Berbera, in the unrecognised territory on the northern Somali coast. This builds on last May’s agreement between Dubai ports operator DP World and the Somaliland government to manage Berbera port. The new development is expected to cost $400m. In combination with its existing naval facilities in Assab, Eritrea, the new airbase will strengthen the UAE’s position around the economically critical sea-lanes of the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab strait and the Gulf of Aden.

Malawian extractive industries watchdog Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN) has raised concerns about a $235,700 payment made by the UAE-based Rak Gas to the government of the southern African state’s disgraced former president Joyce Banda. The payment, to the Reserve Bank of Malawi’s mines department, was made just weeks before elections in 2014 that removed Banda from power. Her government presided over ‘cashgate’, the biggest financial scandal in Malawi’s history.According to South Africa’s amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism (previously affiliated with the Johannesburg weekly Mail & Guardian), the money was deposited at a time when all licences were meant to be suspended due to suspected irregularities.

Foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (ABZ) was in Kenya on 8 June, where he met President Uhuru Kenyatta on the first leg of a regional tour aimed at boosting co-operation and investment. Travelling with minister of state Reem Bint Ibrahim Al-Hashemi and DP World chief executive Sultan Ahmed Sulayem, ABZ went on to Uganda the next day for talks with President Yoweri Museveni, after which the two countries signed a double tax avoidance agreement.

There are fresh questions about plans by Abu Dhabi to develop a military airport at Berbera, Somaliland, after the semi-autonomous territory’s President Muse Bihi Abdi said in a televised speech on 14 September that it would now be an exclusively civilian airport. The following day, he offered a slightly different take when he told a graduation ceremony at Burao University that the agreement involving a military base was still alive, but suggested it would be in a different location.

Foreign affairs and international co-operation minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan travelled to South Africa to co-chair the second session of the UAE-South Africa Joint Commission in Pretoria on 23 October, alongside his local counterpart Lindiwe Sisulu. The two ministers also held bilateral discussions and signed a memorandum of understanding on social development.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and UAE Armed Forces deputy supreme commander Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at Al-Shati Palace in Abu Dhabi on 19 May, as Gulf states continue to vie for influence in the Horn of Africa. MBZ and Ahmed discussed options for boosting economic and trade ties between their countries. It was a brief visit, with Ahmed arriving and departing on the same day from Al-Bateen airport.

Bahrain’s ambassador Mohammed Al-Ghatam presented his credentials to Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs Soltan Bin Saad Al-Muraikhi in Doha on 28 July.