Middle Eastern tensions could test South Africa’s diversification strategy:
South Africa’s push to diversify its trade and investment partners has increasingly turned toward the Middle East and tensions could test the country’s export desk. Yet as geopolitical tensions simmer across the region, the key question policymakers will be observing is how resilient these partnerships are to instability.
Pretoria’s economic diplomacy in recent years has sought to move up the mineral value chain by expanding into emerging economies in the Global South. Middle Eastern economies, abundant with sovereign wealth, and ambitious pursuits to diversify and build strategic trade relations with the continent, have become attractive partners.
The UAE, in particular, has positioned itself as a gateway for African trade and investment. Recent investment initiatives demonstrate this alignment, such as the $ 1-billion initiative aimed at expanding artificial intelligence development across Africa, with the potential to support sectors ranging from digital infrastructure to logistics and energy innovation.
During his recent visit to the UAE on 12 January 2026, President Cyril Ramaphosa commended the region’s dual approach to development, where he emphasised economic growth and climate protection. Ramaphosa participated in the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ASDW) aimed at fostering cross-sector collaboration and encouraging advanced solutions to sustainable development.
“One of the advantages was, we were able to raise finance smartly; we were able to raise fairly good, blended finance initiatives, grants, concessional financing…so the blended finance architecture was quite good and innovative,” said Ramaphosa.
Bilateral trade between South Africa and the Gulf states has grown steadily over the past decade, supported by logistics connectivity through ports and aviation networks. However, regional volatility raises questions about the resilience of trade partnership.
Conflicts in Gaza, tensions involving Iran, and disruptions to key shipping routes such as the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz have heightened global concerns about trade stability. For countries seeking deeper integration with the region, these developments pose potential risks.
Despite this uncertainty, policymakers and investors increasingly view economic engagement with Gulf states as structurally resilient. Much of the region’s economic strategy is anchored in long-term transformation plans, such as the UAE’s push to develop knowledge economies driven by artificial intelligence, renewable energy and advanced manufacturing.
The UAE’s ‘AI for Development’ initiative which pledged $ 1 billion at the November G20 summit, seeks to modernise African digital architecture and further align agreements with institutional capacity. Officials have hailed it as groundbreaking in capitalising on the continent’s youth dividend.
“The initiative aims to support and finance artificial intelligence projects in African countries in order to strengthen digital infrastructure, improve government services, and enhance productivity and quality of life for citizens. This reflects a comprehensive development vision that relies on technology as a fundamental driver of growth and supports the use of technology in social development fields,” said Sultan Mohammed Al Shamsi, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Development and International Organizations.
Trade diversification also intersects with South Africa’s efforts to move up the value chain. Rather than exporting primarily raw commodities, policymakers have increasingly emphasised beneficiation, the processing of minerals and resources into higher-value products, as a top priority.
Gulf economies are investing heavily in industrial development, agriculture and energy infrastructure. These sectors require urban developmental inputs such as food processors, specialised metals and manufactured components that South Africa could potentially supply if domestic industrial policy succeeds.
Energy cooperation is another area where interests converge. Speaking at the Africa Energy Indaba on Wednesday, Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa highlighted the continent’s energy future amid global geopolitical tensions.
His remarks reflected the continent’s need to “strengthen resilience” and pursue partnerships that can support Africa’s infrastructure expansion while navigating an uncertain international environment.
“Energy is not an isolated sector. It is the foundation of growth, the enabler of trade, the engine of industrial development and the guarantor of dignity for South Africa and for the continent as a whole,” said Ramokgopa.
Geopolitical instability does not necessarily undermine these partnership investments in infrastructure development and renewable energy. Although trade agreements experience ebbs, flows, volatility and uncertainty, economic alignment can weather the storm.
Policymakers and civil servants can converge at the intersection of economic diversification in the Gulf states and modernisation programmes of African countries.
The weight women carry and the stories we refuse to see:
International Women’s Day (8 March) arrives each year with flowers, hashtags, panel discussions and corporate emails carefully drafted to celebrate resilience.
We celebrate strength. We celebrate progress. We celebrate “how far we have come.” And yet there is something uneasy about celebration when the burdens remain so unevenly distributed.
Because women do not merely work. They carry. They carry institutions. They carry households. They carry histories. They carry expectations that are so normalised that we rarely stop to name them.
And in naming them, we might begin to see what we have long chosen not to see.
The quiet architecture of gendered labour
In many workplaces, women are still expected to be the emotional regulators of the room. The ones who smooth conflict. The ones who remember birthdays. The ones who check in when someone is struggling. The ones who take notes. The ones who ensure the meeting feels “balanced.”
These acts are rarely written into job descriptions. They are simply assumed.
When a man asserts himself, he is decisive. When a woman asserts herself, she risks being described as “difficult.” When a man withdraws emotionally, he is focused. When a woman does so, she is asked whether she is coping.
In recent research on women living with chronic illness, I have seen how these expectations intensify rather than soften when a woman’s body does not conform to workplace ideals of endurance and composure. Workplaces are not neutral spaces. They are structured around assumptions of stability, predictability and uninterrupted productivity. When women must “perform wellness” to remain credible, gendered expectations merge with ableist ones.
The architecture of expectation is subtle. It does not shout. It whispers. It shapes behaviour through repetition.
Over time it becomes normal. And what is normal is rarely interrogated.
The myth of universal womanhood
But perhaps the greatest disservice of our public conversations is that we often speak of “women” as though they exist outside of history, race, class, disability, geography and culture.
As though womanhood is a single experience. It is not.
The woman navigating a boardroom in Sandton does not carry the same weight as the woman navigating a factory floor, or a clinic queue, or a township classroom. The Black woman navigating corporate leadership does not experience gender in isolation from race. The woman with a disability does not experience gender separate from accessibility. The working-class mother does not experience ambition separate from survival.
Intersectionality is not a fashionable theory. It is a lived reality.
As part of the broader study mentioned earlier, we also explored experiences of work and invisibility and found that inclusion is rarely guaranteed by policy alone. It is relational. It is contingent. It depends on trust, managerial discretion and everyday interactions that either affirm or quietly erode credibility.
When we celebrate women in leadership without asking which women are able to enter, and which must over-perform simply to remain, we flatten complexity into comfort. When we celebrate “women’s advancement” without asking which women are advancing and which remain structurally excluded, we risk mistaking visibility for equality.
The double and triple shift
Many women leave the workplace only to begin another shift at home.
Care work remains stubbornly gendered. The invisible labour of planning meals, scheduling appointments, remembering school requirements, managing elderly parents and maintaining emotional stability within families — this labour does not disappear when women enter formal employment.
It expands.
The professional woman is expected to excel, but not neglect. To lead, but not intimidate. To achieve, but not at the cost of domestic harmony.
The bar is not merely higher. It is wider.
And for women whose economic reality does not allow the outsourcing of care, the burden intensifies.
Our research also reveals how some women must manage fluctuating health in silence, fearing that disclosure will mark them as unreliable. They live what we have described as a fragile “contingent coherence” — holding together professional identity, bodily unpredictability and relational credibility, often without institutional recognition.
We speak of “work-life balance” as though life were an optional hobby. For many women, life is the second and sometimes third job.
The cost of adaptation
There is also the quiet cost of constant adaptation.
Many women learn early how to modulate their voice. How to soften their tone. How to dress in ways that command respect without appearing threatening. How to navigate male-dominated spaces without drawing too much attention to their difference.
Adaptation is a survival skill. But survival is not freedom.
In professional environments built around an “ideal worker” who is endlessly available and emotionally contained, women often internalise the need to over-perform simply to avoid doubt. When illness, race, disability or class intersect with gender, this performance becomes more demanding still.
The workplace often rewards conformity to an inherited norm. Those who resemble that norm move more easily. Those who do not must work twice: once at their role and once at being acceptable.
This labour is invisible. Yet it shapes careers profoundly.
Representation is not enough
We have made progress in representation. More women sit at executive tables. More women occupy academic posts. More women lead institutions.
And this matters.
But representation alone does not dismantle structure. If the structures themselves remain calibrated to expectations built around uninterrupted productivity, aesthetic composure and bodily stability, then inclusion becomes conditional.
The woman who succeeds often does so by absorbing exceptional strain.
The system remains intact. And the celebration feels premature.
Listening more deeply
Perhaps this International Women’s Day requires less performance and more listening.
Listening to the woman who feels invisible in meetings despite her qualifications. Listening to the woman who is told she is “too ambitious.”
Listening to the woman whose race and gender make her hyper-visible and simultaneously unheard. Listening to the woman who must choose between professional advancement and family stability because the system was not designed with her in mind. Listening to the woman who carries disability into spaces that were not built for her body.
Listening without defensiveness. Listening without rushing to solutions. Listening long enough to recognise that inclusion is not a static achievement but an ongoing relational practice — one sustained by trust, responsiveness and ethical proximity.
The work ahead
If we are serious about gender equality, we must move beyond celebration into structural honesty.
This means interrogating pay disparities, yes. But it also means examining informal expectations.
It means rethinking how leadership is defined. It means redistributing care work, not merely praising women for managing it heroically.
It means asking why flexibility policies often carry stigma. It means recognising that not all women begin from the same starting line and that some must constantly prove they are “well enough,” “strong enough,” or “stable enough” to belong.
Equality cannot mean that some women are permitted entry into systems that remain hostile to others.
Justice requires redesign. And redesign requires discomfort.
A different kind of commemoration
International Women’s Day should not merely be a day of applause. It should be a day of reckoning.
A day on which we examine the invisible labour that sustains our institutions. A day on which we acknowledge that intersectionality is not academic jargon but lived complexity. A day on which we resist the temptation to speak of “women” as a singular category detached from race, class, disability and geography.
It should be a day on which we ask ourselves not whether women are strong enough — they have always been strong enough — but whether our workplaces are courageous enough to change.
Because the question is no longer whether women can carry the weight. The question is why they are still expected to carry so much of it alone.
Professor Armand Bam is the head of social impact and the PGDip in NPO Leadership Development at Stellenbosch Business School.
Supporting adolescent girls advances us all this International Women’s Day:
This year’s International Women’s Day campaign is ‘Give to Gain’, highlighting that when women thrive, we all rise. The path to equality is paved with innovative programmes which prioritise women and girls, while also benefiting their families, communities and countries.
Eastern and Southern Africa have some of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality, adolescent pregnancy, HIV and sexual violence, all of which disproportionately impact adolescent girls in particular. Behind every statistic is a girl deciding whether to seek care, speak out or more worryingly, stay silent.
Enabling these girls is not only the right thing to do — it also creates lasting change. Adolescent years are called ‘formative’ because they literally build the foundations for our future health, wellbeing and prosperity – as well as our children’s. In an environment of shrinking overseas aid, we need these ‘multiplier effects’.
These five interventions are proven to impact adolescent girls’ chances and improve society.
Address violence both on paper and in practice
One in every five girls across sub-Saharan Africa has experienced rape or sexual assault before turning 18. While UNICEF funds thousands of survivor-centred grassroots organisations, less visible work also has tangible impacts. Behaviour change initiatives address the attitudes which normalise violence and new government legislation can ensure justice is served. The impacts are felt in child-friendly courts, allowing anonymous testimony and police gender desks, ensuring post-rape evidence-gathering supports survivors’ wellbeing as much as perpetrators’ prosecution.
Share collective knowledge to enhance collective power
Peer-support models are a cornerstone of this region’s drive to end AIDS by 2030. Through UNICEF-supported peer provider programmes, adolescents at risk of HIV, violence and early pregnancy are connected to trained mentors who share their lived experience and are embedded within health and community systems. These trusted peers help girls navigate complex health, education and economic challenges — and ensure they are supported across services. Evidence from South Africa and Zimbabwe shows significant gains in agency, reduced stigma and stronger links to learning and skills. By translating this evidence into policy and practice, countries across the region are now institutionalising peer and community models at scale, reaching millions of young people.
Happy mother, happy child makes for stronger communities
A quarter of young women give birth before they’re 18 in Eastern and Southern Africa and the vast majority of early pregnancies are unintended. SADC’s latest scorecard of sexual and reproductive health and rights (an outstanding data bank supported by the joint UN Regional programme 2gether 4 SRHR) shows 12 out of 16 countries in Southern Africa have recorded a decline in adolescent births, thanks to life-skills, HIV and comprehensive prevention education in schools. Prevention strategies are working. But we must also support millions of young mothers raising their young ones today. UNICEF reviewed what works for adolescent mums in South Africa and the results were extraordinary. Investing in food security cuts the odds of girls dropping out of school by 50 per cent. Adolescent-friendly health clinics build confidence and support safer choices by more than 50 per cent. Supporting parents with non-violent parenting tactics has been associated with reductions in sexual violence of up to 79 per cent. When all three supports are available, even unemployment dropped. We were so excited by these surprising benefits to the wider community that we studied Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini and found similarly dramatic results.
Treat men and boys as allies
Because equality and justice should benefit everyone, men and boys can be crucial allies. Encouraging influential men to engage their networks in life-saving health information has been game-changing. From the religious leaders in Uganda hosting HIV-prevention drives in churches and mosques, to the youth champions speaking up against violence in gyms in Eswatini, men and boys are congregating to share strategies. Africa’s embrace of responsible leadership by men and boys has enormous potential to reduce violence, increase school retention, and improve health outcomes. Not just for themselves but for their sisters, mothers, wives and daughters, as they actively walk the path of equality and respect.
Invest in adolescent girls to yield a high return for everyone, for generations
With a median age of just 19, Africa will soon have the world’s largest workforce, driven by youth. For this to become a demographic dividend, we must invest together. When we give young people digital and green skills, linked to private-sector partnerships, they gain experience and entrepreneurial confidence. Investing in a “Youth Force for Africa” is one of the highest-return public investments governments can make. It protects prior investments in education and health, expands the future tax base through higher productivity and employment, and reduces pressure on health, social protection and justice systems. In short, investing in adolescents gives a high yield return for everyone.
For every country in the region to meet its Sustainable Development Goals, we must carefully consider what we must give in order to gain. Governments, UN, civil society, donors, communities and individuals alike shouldn’t see giving as a subtraction. It’s intentional multiplication. We should be deliberate about what we give — because the evidence is clear about what we gain. Supporting adolescent girls advances us all, this International Women’s Day and beyond.
Etleva Kadilli is the UNICEF regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa
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