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Abu Dhabi’s involvement in conflicts in Sudan and Libya is back in focus, after the UAE opened a second field hospital in eastern Chad, following evidence that its existing hospital was used as a cover for supplying weapons to Sudanese civil war leader Hemedti’s RSF militia. It fits into a wider pattern of Emirati involvement in African conflicts, as well as business.

Sudan may be on the verge of a de facto split, its infrastructure is in ruins and populations are struggling to survive a global-scale humanitarian crisis, but there is little incentive for either side to back down one year after militia leader Hemedti launched his RSF’s campaign against erstwhile ally the Sudan Armed Forces regime. While attention is focused on conflicts elsewhere, a major African country is being destroyed for personal advantage in a conflict marked by significant intervention from the wider region.

Construction of the colossal Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) is slated to be completed this year, marking the end of one of the continent’s largest and longest-running infrastructure projects. However, it has come at the cost of heightened animosity with Egypt and Sudan.

The clogging-up of a key oil export pipeline is one of the many bitter fruits of Sudan’s civil conflict, one year after Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces launched its campaign against Khartoum. It is a serious problem for the authorities in Sudan and South Sudan alike.

Abu Dhabi’s perceived support for General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti)’s RSF rebels led the Burhan regime to order 15 UAE embassy staff to leave Khartoum, posing further questions about the Gulf state’s role in the Sudanese civil war, while Hemedti makes significant diplomatic gains abroad and military advances in tortured Sudan.

African Energy examines the events surrounding the recent talks in late October between President General Abdel-Fattah Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (often known as Hemedti).

 Sources say five more turbines are expected to come online at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the coming months, adding a huge amount of capacity to the grid, even as questions remain over the megaproject’s economic impact and whether the infrastructure exists to increase exports. Meanwhile, Ethiopia faces the prospect of renewed conflict as tensions ratchet up with neighbouring Eritrea, writes Our Ethiopia Correspondent.

Sudan and Iran have resumed diplomatic relations after a seven-year break, with their embassies to be reopened in the near future. The development followed talks between Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Sudan’s acting foreign affairs minister Ali Al-Sadiq Ali on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Baku, Azerbaijan earlier this year

Abu Dhabi has yet to give a clear explanation for the extensive airlift to Amdjarass in north-eastern Chad that has been under way since May, but recent reports by a number of US media outlets suggest the UAE has been using the operation to supply anti-tank missiles and drones to Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti)’s Rapid Support Forces, one of the two main protagonists in Sudan’s civil war.

Former Lundin Energy executives denied charges of any complicity in Sudanese atrocities as their trial opened in early September, with hearings in the Stockholm District Court that fit into a growing trend for prosecutors to target companies and senior personnel for war crimes and similar outrages, no matter when they were committed, writes Chris Stephen in Stockholm.

Russia has strongly backed the anti-western, populist regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso through its mercenary Wagner Group, which has also established itself as a force in Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan.

Gulf governments have proved among President Vladimir Putin’s most enthusiastic friends, undermining western efforts to isolate Moscow in a relationship that goes beyond energy and business links. With the mercenary Wagner Group active across the Sahel, several dozen cargo flights between Abu Dhabi and a remote air strip in eastern Chad have provoked renewed speculation about the UAE’s ties with Moscow and its proxies, Gulf States Newsletter staff* report.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi have pledged to renew efforts to resolve their dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) during a meeting in Cairo. The two leaders said they would try to reach an agreement on the dam’s filling and operating procedures within four months.

Much of Sudan’s infrastructure was in a parlous state before murderous and indiscriminate faction fighting broke out in mid-April, but the situation is set to get worse still with control of power plants and oil facilities now split between forces under rival generals Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti). The crisis shows how densely populated modern cities can be reduced to ruin and complex geopolitical shifts are impacting on stability in fragile polities, write Aziz Alnour and John Hamilton.

Sudan’s traditional partners have sought to intervene in the conflict between Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) commander General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)’s General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (widely known as Hemedti), in an attempt to bring peace and, more pragmatically, to evacuate their nationals.