Annual Report - 2025

The Rihla Initiative for Green Economic Growth was launched to address a central contradiction shaping the global climate transition: while the Global South faces the most acute climate, water, and development pressures, the financial, institutional, and strategic architecture required to translate climate ambition into inclusive economic transformation remains fragmented. At the same time, Gulf states—particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—have emerged as pivotal actors in climate finance, infrastructure investment, and green industrial strategy, yet lack structured, policy-driven platforms to align their outward investments with host-country development priorities at scale. Rihla was designed to fill this gap by creating a sustained, multi-regional framework that connects Gulf capital, expertise, and political influence with grounded policy analysis, regional needs, and implementation pathways across the Global South.

Over its first year, Rihla brought together more than 150 policymakers, practitioners, investors, researchers, and institutional leaders across five regions—Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC), South and Southeast Asia (SSEA), Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and the Gulf itself—through a structured sequence of regional workshops, simulation exercises, thematic focus groups, public panels, and a flagship Policy Forum in Doha. These engagements were complemented by a set of substantive knowledge outputs, including the Rihla Handbook, five regional and thematic policy briefs, and the edited volume Southbound: Gulf Climate Finance and Sectoral Transformations in the Global South. Together, these activities established a coherent analytical foundation for understanding how Gulf–Global South cooperation can evolve from transactional investments toward system-level green economic partnerships.

In the Middle East and North Africa, discussions revealed a widening gap between the scale of Gulf investment in renewable energy and the underfinancing of adaptation, water security, agriculture, and resilience infrastructure. While solar and wind projects in countries such as Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan demonstrate technical and financial viability, fragmented governance, political instability, and weak institutional coordination continue to limit broader socio-economic spillovers. Rihla participants stressed that Gulf engagement must move beyond isolated infrastructure projects toward regionally anchored, justice-oriented approaches that integrate water–energy–food systems, strengthen local institutions, and embed community participation to ensure legitimacy and long-term impact.

In Central Asia and the Caucasus, Gulf engagement has been led primarily through renewable energy investments structured around PPAs and sovereign-backed agreements. While renewables offer a clear entry point, the region’s most urgent vulnerabilities lie in grid modernisation, water management, agriculture, and climate adaptation—areas that remain underinvested despite high exposure to drought, environmental degradation, and infrastructure decay. Participants highlighted the risks of fragmented bilateralism, overreliance on single EPC suppliers, and loan-heavy financing models that constrain debt-burdened states. Rihla’s work in CAC underscored the need for regional platforms, concessional finance, and integrated planning that align Gulf capital with long-term institutional resilience and local value creation.

In South and Southeast Asia, Gulf investments have expanded rapidly across renewables, infrastructure, industrial decarbonisation, mining, agritech, and digital systems, often favouring large, bankable projects. Yet the region faces profound adaptation challenges—particularly in climate-resilient cities, water systems, agriculture, and disaster risk reduction—that remain structurally underfunded. Rihla dialogues highlighted the competitive financing landscape shaped by China, Japan, the EU, and the US, and identified opportunities for Gulf actors to differentiate themselves through blended finance, Islamic finance instruments, and risk-sharing mechanisms that support locally led initiatives, sub-national actors, and smaller economies while delivering scalable impact.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Gulf engagement is growing but uneven, concentrated in renewables, agriculture, and extractive-linked investments, largely through bilateral deals. While energy access—particularly through off-grid and mini-grid systems—emerged as a high-impact entry point, participants stressed that sustainable growth depends equally on water infrastructure, climate-smart agriculture, and adaptation. Persistent challenges include weak accountability, limited local capacity building, debt constraints, and an imbalance between mitigation and adaptation finance. Rihla discussions emphasised the need for blended finance, equity participation, regional integration through AfCFTA, and new sovereign-level instruments—such as climate swap facilities—to ensure Gulf–Africa cooperation delivers inclusive growth and resilience rather than reinforcing extractive or debt-driven models.

The Gulf Committee discussions revealed both ambition and fragmentation. Gulf states are increasingly positioning themselves as leaders in green economic growth across the Global South, leveraging sovereign capital, state-owned enterprises, and growing technical expertise in renewable energy, water, agriculture, and climate technologies. However, limited inter-Gulf coordination, data gaps, and risk aversion constrain their ability to project a coherent leadership model. Rihla identified a clear opportunity for the Gulf to move from parallel national strategies toward coordinated platforms that pool resources, align taxonomies, and link outward climate finance with domestic economic diversification agendas.

Across regions, several cross-cutting conclusions emerged. First, capital alone is insufficient, as governance reform, institutional capacity, and inclusive planning are essential for achieving sustainable impact. Second, adaptation remains systematically underfunded despite being central to resilience, food security, and social stability. Third, effective Gulf leadership depends on shifting from transactional, investor-led models toward long-term partnerships grounded in trust, transparency, and co-creation. Finally, there is a growing need for platforms—such as Rihla—that can integrate policy analysis, finance, and implementation across regions and sectors.

As Rihla transitions into its implementation phase, culminating in the Rihla Summit in Abu Dhabi, the Initiative is positioned to serve as a permanent architecture for Gulf–Global South green economic cooperation—linking strategy to delivery, finance to development, and ambition to measurable outcomes.