The UAE’s AD Ports Group and Invictus Investment signed an agreement with Sudan on 13 December to construct the Abu Amama port on the Red Sea. The investment is worth $6 billion. 

The construction site is located over a hundred miles from Sudan’s northern port and will include an agricultural and economic zone and an airport. The area consists of more than 415,000 acres.

The UAE has disclosed that a 250-mile road will connect Sudan’s northern port to the agricultural zone in the Abu Hamad area.

The chairman of Sudanese conglomerate DAL, Osama Daoud Abdellatif, previously described the initiative as a joint-cooperation project that would help expand bilateral relations between Abu Dhabi and Khartoum.

Abdellatif affirmed that the port would be able to deal with various commodities, essentially competing with Sudan’s other prominent ports, adding that Khartoum would be entitled to 35 percent of the net profit generated by the project.

The UAE secured the waters surrounding the Arabian peninsula from the Gulf of Oman to the Red Sea, passing through Yemen’s Socotra Island, granting them the ability to oversee the Arabian Sea. The UAE has used its access to the waters to its advantage during the Saudi-led coalition invasion of Yemen.

In October, a UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) commander reported that UAE’s forces accompanied Israeli military advisors to Yemen’s southern coast.

According to the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah, the country’s Al-Rayan airport was turned into a military base to coordinate illegal fuel transfers in Yemen.

A month prior, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said that Washington and Tel Aviv have bolstered their military presence in Yemen and have intentionally prevented the renewal of a ceasefire between Sanaa and Riyadh to continue its operations in the impoverished country.

According to a report released in March, the UAE is involved in developing a construction project to build facilities on Socotra island, which inhabits 60,000 people and hosts Israeli personnel. This is allegedly part of a plan to turn the Yemeni island into a center for regional espionage.