Arid Saudi Ara­bia looks to Africa’s bread­bas­kets

African Busi­ness | 1 April 2026 

by Harry Clynch.

The coun­tries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which face an arid cli­mate, lim­ited arable land, and per­sist­ent water short­ages, are some of the most depend­ent on food imports any­where in the world. Saudi Ara­bia imports approx­im­ately 80% of its total food needs, and, accord­ing to some ana­lysts, the coun­try could be entirely reli­ant on imports for domestic con­sump­tion by 2050.

With the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion expec­ted to increase from around 36m this year to an estim­ated 47m by 2050 – and a chan­ging cli­mate fur­ther com­plic­at­ing efforts to boost domestic agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion – Riy­adh has made ensur­ing its food secur­ity a stra­tegic pri­or­ity.

Indeed, Saudi Ara­bia’s “Vis­ion 2030” devel­op­ment pro­gramme includes sev­eral key pledges aimed at boost­ing the King­dom’s food secur­ity. As well as achiev­ing high levels of self-suf­fi­ciency in cer­tain essen­tial com­mod­it­ies, Riy­adh is also seek­ing to reduce food loss and waste by around 50% by 2030, while work­ing to ensure price sta­bil­ity and con­sist­ent avail­ab­il­ity of pro­duce.

Shocks high­light vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies

Recent shocks – includ­ing the out­break of war in Ukraine in 2022 – under­lined how vul­ner­able the Gulf’s sup­ply chains in this area are. Rus­sia and Ukraine are two of the world’s largest agri­cul­tural export­ers – jointly rep­res­ent­ing roughly one-third of wheat exports before the war – and provide the major­ity of MENA’s sup­ply.

Shortly after that con­flict star­ted, Saudi’s fin­ance min­is­ter Mohammed al-Jadaan warned that “the MENA region [was] very, very, very vul­ner­able” to dis­rup­tion in global food sup­plies.

It is in this con­text that Saudi Ara­bia has been look­ing to strengthen ties with Africa, par­tic­u­larly in the agri­cul­tural industry, as a way to guar­an­tee its food secur­ity and make itself more resi­li­ent to future shocks.

Africa is home to roughly 65% of the world’s remain­ing uncul­tiv­ated arable land. The con­tin­ent has, in parts, an abund­ance of sun­shine and fresh water; it is an obvi­ous part­ner for coun­tries look­ing for ways to strengthen their food sup­ply chains. Speak­ing at the Saudi-Arab-African Eco­nomic Con­fer­ence in Riy­adh in 2023, al-Jadaan said that the con­tin­ent “rep­res­ents one of the pri­or­it­ies of the Pub­lic Invest­ment Fund” – the PIF, Saudi Ara­bia’s sov­er­eign wealth fund. He added that “we have estab­lished part­ner­ships with Africa to expand in sev­eral sec­tors, and the King­dom sup­ports more than 400 projects in the African con­tin­ent... The King­dom is keen to con­sol­id­ate its rela­tions with the African con­tin­ent, which is one of the most import­ant axes for the future of the global eco­nomy.”

Move into pro­duc­tion

Saudi Ara­bia’s efforts to secure stronger access to African agri­cul­tural pro­duce are rel­at­ively nas­cent, as is much of the coun­try’s Africa strategy, but invest­ments are grow­ing from a small base. His­tor­ic­ally, the King­dom’s strategy involved pur­chas­ing swathes of land, par­tic­u­larly in the Horn of Africa, which is rel­at­ively close to the Gulf and there­fore allows for reli­able trans­port­a­tion of agri­cul­tural products.

Back in 2009 Saudi-Ethiopian bil­lion­aire Mohammed Hus­sein Al-Amoudi estab­lished Saudi Star Agri­cul­tural Devel­op­ment, which pur­chased a 10,000-hec­tare lease in Ethiopia’s Gam­bela region for a major rice farm­ing project. In 2011 the com­pany said it would invest $2.5bn in Ethiopian agri­cul­ture by 2020.

In the same year Saudi Ara­bian hold­ing com­pany Manafea announced plans to invest $125m in a 5,000-hec­tare farm in Zam­bia to grow pine­apples and other fruit. In 2016 Sudan’s National Assembly approved a bill grant­ing Saudi Ara­bia the right to cul­tiv­ate around 420,000-hec­tares of land for 99 years. Before the out­break of Sudan’s civil war in April 2023, Saudi Ara­bia is repor­ted to have inves­ted in excess of $35bn in the coun­try. In 2022 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sal­man pledged to provide $3bn to projects in Sudan – a plan that stalled after hos­til­it­ies star­ted.

Dis­placed com­munit­ies

The idea behind these ini­ti­at­ives was to pro­duce agri­cul­tural goods in the Horn’s more favour­able cli­mates that would be destined for export to Saudi Ara­bia. While African gov­ern­ments have unsur­pris­ingly ten­ded to wel­come the pro­spect of Saudi invest­ments, some projects have been less pop­u­lar among local com­munit­ies, some of whom have been dis­placed as a res­ult of the land pur­chases.

Indeed, the Saudi Star project in Ethiopia sparked protests in Gam­bela, with aggrieved local Anuak vil­la­gers reportedly attack­ing the com­pany’s com­pound and killing sev­eral employ­ees in 2012. Human rights groups have raised con­cerns of “neo-colo­ni­al­ism”.

Per­haps partly as a res­ult of this, Saudi Ara­bia’s strategy appears to have shif­ted in recent years to focus more on invest­ing in agri­cul­ture-related infra­struc­ture rather than land pur­chases. Last year Vis­ion Invest, Saudi Ara­bia’s infra­struc­ture fund, announced a $700m equity invest­ment in indus­trial eco­sys­tems oper­ator Arise Integ­rated Indus­trial Plat­forms (Arise IIP) which allowed the King­dom to gain pri­or­ity access to agri­cul­tural products from sev­eral African coun­tries.

Infra­struc­ture focus

Vis­ion Invest’s cap­ital is to be used to accel­er­ate projects includ­ing a fer­til­iser blend­ing facil­ity in Togo, a green ammo­nia project in Kenya and a cot­ton com­plex in Rwanda. Mohammed Abunayyan, chair­man of Vis­ion Invest, said at the time that “we are not buy­ing land; we are buy­ing net­worked access to Africa’s future sup­ply of fer­til­iser, pro­cessed crops and light-man­u­fac­tured goods.”

In Novem­ber 2023 the Saudi Fund for Devel­op­ment (SFD) signed a memor­andum of under­stand­ing with the Africa Fin­ance Cor­por­a­tion (AFC) to co-fin­ance sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture projects across Africa. In the private sec­tor, too, Saudi Ara­bia has made some major moves to gain deeper expos­ure to African agri­cul­ture products.

In Decem­ber 2024 Saudi Ara­bia’s SALIC Inter­na­tional Invest­ment Com­pany, which is owned by PIF, com­pleted a $1.24bn deal to acquire a 35.43% stake in Olam Agri, a sub­si­di­ary of Singa­pore-headquartered Olam Group and a global agribusi­ness firm that dis­trib­utes essen­tial food, feeds and fibres in mar­kets across Africa and Asia.

In Feb­ru­ary 2025 SALIC pur­chased a fur­ther 44.6% of the com­pany for $1.78bn, bring­ing its total share to just over 80%.

Sulai­man Al Rumaih, SALIC’s CEO, said that “the full acquis­i­tion agree­ment of Olam Agri aligns with SALIC’s stra­tegic object­ives of diver­si­fy­ing sources of essen­tial com­mod­it­ies to secure a key pos­i­tion in the global grains sec­tor.”

While it appears that the Saudi Ara­bian strategy in Africa has shif­ted away from con­tro­ver­sial land pur­chas­ing deals and towards invest­ments in major com­pan­ies and infra­struc­ture projects, there remains work to be done if Riy­adh is to achieve its food secur­ity goals.

Samir Bhat­tacharya, an asso­ciate fel­low at the Observer Research Found­a­tion in New Delhi, has poin­ted out that whereas “the UAE [United Arab Emir­ates] has estab­lished its lead­er­ship as a logist­ics and re-export hub through sig­ni­fic­ant invest­ments in ports and infra­struc­ture in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea area… Saudi Ara­bia faces more sig­ni­fic­ant logist­ical chal­lenges,” as it lacks extens­ive port infra­struc­ture.

Need for scale

Saudi Ara­bia’s clear need to invest in African agri­cul­ture and asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture undoubtedly cre­ates oppor­tun­it­ies for African private sec­tor play­ers and national gov­ern­ments. Ronak Gopal­das, a dir­ector at the Sig­nal Risk con­sultancy in Cape Town, argues, however, that in order to max­im­ise the value of these oppor­tun­it­ies African coun­tries should con­sider col­lab­or­at­ing to present multi-coun­try projects that would offer Saudi Ara­bian investors the oppor­tun­ity to invest in luc­rat­ive, highly scal­able projects. “Riy­adh tends to oper­ate at scale and prefers struc­tured, high-impact invest­ments,” he says.

“There­fore, African sov­er­eigns would do well to align their offer­ings with sec­tors that res­on­ate with Saudi pri­or­it­ies – most not­ably those which cut across agri­cul­ture, invest­ment and energy – and con­sider pool­ing projects across coun­tries or regions to cre­ate scale and invest­ment appeal.”