Algeria Gate: Long before networks of gold, ports, and foreign fighters in Africa drew international investigations, sanctions, and political action, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had already identified external interference in the continent’s conflict zones as one of the gravest threats to African sovereignty. As early as 2024 he sounded the alarm.
More than two years later, a Financial Times investigation published in August 2026, together with Human Rights Watch reports, U.S. sanctions, and European Parliament moves, has brought those warnings into sharp focus. The figures are stark: more than $168 billion in announced Emirati investments in Africa since 2017, hundreds of tons of African gold flowing through opaque channels, and networks that, according to the British newspaper, funneled around 2,000 Colombian fighters into Sudan to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces.
The chronological comparison is striking. In March 2024, President Tebboune spoke of interference by an unnamed Arab state, noting that its money was present wherever conflicts existed in Mali, Libya, and Sudan, and warning that “patience has limits.” The president did not name the UAE explicitly, which requires a journalistic distinction between his official position and the subsequent linkages drawn by Algerian and international media. Yet subsequent developments have made the core of his reading more present, as international institutions and newspapers began documenting the interweaving of money, ports, resources, security, and fighter networks across a number of African flashpoints.
What stands out in this sequence is the forward-looking nature of the approach adopted by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune toward the continent. He did not treat African crises as isolated security files, but early on linked external interference to the persistence of conflicts and the weakening of states’ ability to control their decisions and wealth. Sudan was among the files in which this position appeared most clearly, when Tebboune, while receiving Sudanese Sovereign Council Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in January 2024, affirmed Algeria’s standing with Sudan and stressed the need to address internal conflicts far from foreign interference, before returning in May of the same year to warn of the widening of external interventions in the crises of Sudan, Libya, and Yemen.
What Tebboune Warned About in 2024 Returns with Heavy Figures
More than two years after those warnings, the Financial Times published on August 4th, 2026 an extensive investigation into the Emirati presence in Africa, presenting a picture that goes beyond traditional investment to a broad network of interests in ports, mining, agriculture, energy, and logistics. According to data from fDi Markets affiliated with the newspaper, the announced value of Emirati projects on the continent has exceeded $168 billion since 2017, with the caveat that part of these sums represents announced projects that do not all necessarily translate into executed investments. Examples cited in the investigation include a $10 billion wind power plant in Egypt, a $4 billion oil refinery in Uganda, and a $1.2 billion port project in Senegal.
At the heart of part of this expansion moves the International Holding Company group, whose market value according to the Financial Times is around $240 billion, with investments in copper in Zambia, gold in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Mali, and iron in Mauritania. Yet the importance of this map does not stop at the volume of funds deployed, because the nature of the targeted assets gives the investment a weight that exceeds direct financial return. Ports, maritime corridors, mines, and agricultural land are not ordinary commercial facilities; they are nodes that control the movement of goods, raw materials, and supply chains.
DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports operate or develop ports, inland terminals, and free zones in 13 African countries, while DP World’s logistics and distribution networks have expanded to more than 25 countries after additional acquisitions in South Africa and Nigeria. The case of the Port of Berbera in Somaliland illustrates the nature of this interweaving: DP World injected around $450 million into the port and related infrastructure, including a road connecting to Ethiopia, at a time when the commercial concession was accompanied by a separate agreement granting the UAE use of military facilities and a nearby airstrip.
Here the Algerian vision defended by President Tebboune acquires a deeper dimension, because sovereignty in this reading does not stop at political borders but extends to the ports, corridors, facilities, and resources that control a state’s ability to manage its economy. Foreign investment can constitute a necessary lever for development, but its value for the host state is tied to its capacity to build local capabilities while keeping sovereign decision-making and core wealth under its control.
$168 Billion… When Investment Becomes Larger Than a Deal
The British investigation thus poses a question larger than the volume of investment itself: the dividing line between capital that builds infrastructure and capital that grants its owner instruments of influence that go beyond the commercial project. This question aligns with the approach adopted by President Tebboune in his relationship with Africa, where he has consistently emphasized that the continent’s partnerships should serve its development while at the same time preserving the independence of its decision-making.
The sensitivity of the issue becomes clearer when looking at statements by Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel, who criticized before the Financial Times what he described as an Emirati ambition to control the region, considering that the path began with ports in East Africa and then expanded toward power projection and resource exploitation. Ethiopian researcher Mehari Taddele Maru also argued that the volume of resources deployed by Abu Dhabi can limit the ability of some African states to balance their relationship with it.
This reading does not mean that every Emirati investment necessarily carries a security or political dimension, nor does it allow gathering different projects into a single scheme without evidence. But it shows that control over sensitive assets such as ports, mines, and corridors can produce weight that exceeds the accounting value of the contract; precisely what makes the concept of economic sovereignty part of the discussion about Africa’s future.
Africa’s gold is vanishing… and the value settles outside the continent
The question becomes sharper when the focus moves from ports to gold. A SWISSAID study covering 54 African countries estimated that no less than 435 tonnes of gold left the continent without authorization in 2022 alone, worth nearly $31 billion; more than a tonne per day, while gold smuggling from Africa more than doubled between 2012 and 2022.
The larger figure concerns the destination that received a major share of these flows. Between 2012 and 2022, the United Arab Emirates imported around 2,569 tonnes of African gold that were not recorded as exports in the original African countries, valued at approximately $115.3 billion. In 2022 alone, the UAE took 47% of the African gold exported abroad, compared with 21% for Switzerland and 12% for India.
The trend has not slowed since then: in 2024 the UAE imported about 748 tonnes of African gold, an 18% increase in one year, including 29 tonnes directly from Sudan, 18 tonnes from Chad and 9 tonnes from Libya. Its total global gold imports that year reached 1,392 tonnes, worth $105.4 billion.
The UAE, for its part, says it has developed strict rules for responsible gold sourcing and anti-money laundering, and affirms that its trade is subject to oversight and international standards. Yet the data reported by SWISSAID continue to raise an economically critical question for the continent concerning the volume of revenues, taxes, and hard currency that producing countries lose when wealth leaves official channels, while links of added value, refining, trade, and re-export shift to centers outside Africa.
From this angle, the vision defended by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune regarding retention of sovereignty over resources appears more closely tied to the actual figures. Natural wealth does not achieve economic sovereignty merely by existing underground; it does so when the state can control its extraction, marketing, and collection of revenues, and retain a larger share of the value it generates.
From Ports to Battlefields
On August 15th, the Financial Times moved to a more sensitive level when it published an investigation into a network it said had delivered around 2,000 Colombian fighters to Sudan to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces. The investigation was based on interviews with seven fighters, travel records, flight lists, photos, videos, and device- and communications-tracking data. The fighters said the entity that brought them into the network was Global Security Services Group, based in the UAE. The company, according to the newspaper, did not respond to requests for comment.
The journalistic investigation was not the first to raise the issue. In May 2026, Human Rights Watch published an 83-page investigation concluding that hundreds of Colombian military contractors had been recruited since 2024 by private companies and had passed through military facilities in Ghayathi and Al Wathba in Abu Dhabi before moving to Sudan via a network that includes eastern Libya, Bosaso in Somalia, and N’Djamena in Chad.
The organization relied on interviews with former contractors, a former GSSG employee, witnesses from El Fasher, company documents, official licenses, and geolocated photos and videos. It concluded in its assessment that the use of Emirati government facilities and the company’s ties to high levels of authority point to a state-backed operation. The UAE rejects this conclusion and denies providing military or financial support to the Rapid Support Forces.
According to the Financial Times investigation, the first Colombian battalion arrived in October 2024 and contributed to establishing a supply corridor through eastern Libya toward Darfur, while another contingent passed through the Bosaso base. One fighter said around 300 specialists received training between January and October 2025 on drones and air defense inside the UAE before being sent to Sudan. The newspaper also supported this pathway with a digital analysis by Conflict Insights Group of device data that appeared in the UAE, then Bosaso, Nyala, and El Fasher.
Here President Tebboune’s warnings return to the heart of the scene. Without attributing to him what he did not say or claiming that the investigations proved the identity of the state he meant, it remains clear that the president placed, as early as 2024, the danger of external money transferring into conflict zones among the priorities of his reading of the African situation; before financing, recruitment, and military transport networks later became documented international files.
2,000 Fighters… Investigations Go Beyond the Limits of Journalism
By the end of 2025, the file was no longer confined to journalism and human-rights organizations. On December 9th, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on four individuals and four companies it said formed a cross-border network for recruiting former Colombian military personnel on behalf of the Rapid Support Forces, covering infantry, artillery, drone and vehicle operations, and training. The Treasury identified Álvaro Andrés Quijano Becerra, a retired Colombian officer residing in the UAE, as a central figure in the recruitment and deployment process, before sanctions expanded during 2026 to include other figures and entities linked to the network.
On July 9th,2026, the file moved to a European political level when the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Sudan by 476 votes to 28 with 96 abstentions, calling for sanctions on those responsible for attacks on civilians and on external facilitators, naming Global Security Services Group, and calling for the addition of the Rapid Support Forces to the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. It remains necessary to distinguish between the call and the actual measure, as the resolution was not an announcement of an already completed listing but a political demand for it to be taken.
In contrast, the UAE categorically rejects the accusations related to supporting the Rapid Support Forces and affirms that it has not provided weapons or military financing to any party in the Sudanese war, while stressing its support for a permanent ceasefire and a civilian-led political process. The Financial Times also reported an Emirati response stating that the authorities had conducted investigations into GSSG and concluded that it was not involved in mercenary activity in Sudan, and that Abu Dhabi denies facilitating the transit of foreign fighters or providing weapons to any party.
Tebboune Knew About the Danger Before Its Features Became Clear
Amid this sequence, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s statements of March 2024 acquire a different weight. They came more than two years before the latest Financial Times investigation, before the detailed Human Rights Watch report, and before the expansion of the U.S. sanctions network and the political movement inside the European Parliament. This does not journalistically permit saying that a later investigation proved the identity of the state the president meant, because he did not name it officially. Yet it reveals that his early diagnosis of the danger of external money interweaving with conflicts preceded the appearance of a large body of data that later made the subject a matter of broad international follow-up.
Here lies the strength of President Tebboune’s forward-looking vision. He viewed African sovereignty as a single system in which security cannot be separated from the economy, nor political decision-making from resources, ports, and corridors. A state that loses control over the source of its wealth, the route of its exports, or its security decision may gradually lose part of its capacity to shape its policies freely, even without traditional military occupation or direct intervention.
From this standpoint, the Algerian line has remained based on rejecting external interference and pushing toward African solutions for African crises; an approach that prioritizes the survival of the national state, its institutions, and its ability to manage its resources away from interlocking networks of interests.
Sovereignty First… The Algerian Vision for Africa
The significance of this approach increases when the figures are placed side by side. There are $168 billion in announced investments in Africa since 2017, $115.3 billion of unrecorded African gold upon export that reached the UAE over a decade, 748 tons of African gold imported by the UAE in 2024, alongside around 2,000 Colombian fighters discussed in the Financial Times investigation.
These figures alone do not prove the existence of a single scheme linking all the files, and the UAE denies the accusations related to supporting parties to the war in Sudan. Yet they reveal the scale of the space in which capital, resources, logistics, and security now move on the continent itself; making the question of sovereignty more urgent than a mere calculation of the volume of incoming investment.
Here the Algerian vision led by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune advances as a reading based on the premise that Africa needs investments and partnerships, but at the same time needs to ensure that its need for financing does not turn into a surrender of decision-making or resources. The investment most beneficial to the continent is the one that builds factories, ports, and infrastructure, generates jobs, and transfers technology, while keeping the state the final decision-maker over its resources and economic pathways.
Thus, President Tebboune’s position toward external interventions was not merely a diplomatic reservation linked to a political moment, but part of a broader conception of the continent’s future based on linking political independence, economic sovereignty, and control over resources. This is what makes his earlier warnings more significant when read today alongside what international institutions reveal about networks of gold, ports, and fighters.
Algeria did not wait for recruitment networks to become sanctions lists, nor for tons of unrecorded gold to become the subject of international studies, before placing the issues of sovereignty and non-interference at the heart of its African discourse. President Tebboune warned of the danger when a large part of its details was still far from the surface of international debate.
More than two years later, the picture taking shape from journalistic investigations, human-rights organizations, sanctions, and political decisions appears closer to the essence of what Algeria warned about early on: the continent needs not only to attract money, but to possess the capacity to set its terms, protect its wealth, control its corridors, and prevent conflicts from turning into open markets for financing, weapons, and fighters.
From this stems the broader forward-looking dimension of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s vision: Africa’s coming battle may not revolve around who holds the largest quantity of resources, but around who retains the decision when those resources turn into money, ports, logistics networks, and cross-border interests. In this equation, Algeria places sovereignty at the beginning, not at the end of the calculation.
