Energy, Ports, and Corridors in Gulf–Africa Relations

Hello, everyone, and thank you for tuning into WASAP, the Africa-West Asia podcast, brought to you by CARPO's Project West Asia and Sub-Saharan African Partnerships in Flux.

For those of you joining for the first time, my name is Desiree Custers.

I'm a project manager at CARPO and one of your hosts.

And I am Hubert Kinko, senior researcher at CARPO and co-host of the WASAP podcast.

Each of our episodes explores a different aspect of Gulf-Africa relations, and today we turn to a topic at the crossroads of economics, geopolitics and infrastructure, namely energy and port corridors and how they're reshaping ties between the Gulf and Africa.

To unpack this with us, we are delighted to welcome two leading voices on the subject.

First, Dr. Madalena Pocopio, who is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Madalena works on Africa-EU relations, Africa-Middle East ties, and economic and natural resource dynamics across the continent, with particular expertise on Gulf engagement on the continent.

And joining her is Dr.

May Darwish, who is Associate Professor in International Relations of the Middle East at the University of Birmingham.

Her research focuses on international relations and infrastructure politics in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on ports and power projection.

Welcome to you both.