A silent power shift is underway in the global financial order. For two decades, conversations about development finance revolved around three coordinates: Washington, with its multilateral banks and conditional lending; Beijing, with infrastructure megaprojects and collateralised loans; and global markets, with their unforgiving appetite for yield. Over the last five years, a fourth centre of gravity has emerged. It does not host a development bank, issue long communiqués or talk about “rules-based orders.” It sits between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, commands vast sovereign wealth funds and prefers balance sheets to speeches.

The New Balance Sheets That Matter

The Gulf’s ascent as a financial power can be read directly off its sovereign wealth funds. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Abu Dhabi’s ADIA, Mubadala and ADQ, along with Kuwait’s long-established fund, now sit near the top of global rankings. Their combined assets are measured in the trillions of dollars. What distinguishes them is not only sheer size but also their mandate. They are expected to preserve wealth for a post-oil future while also projecting state influence abroad.

Taken together, Gulf sovereign funds manage more capital than China’s leading policy banks did at the peak of Belt and Road. That does not mean the Gulf is building dams and railways on the same scale. It does mean that when an African or Asian finance minister looks for a large, fast-moving source of capital that is not tied to Western austerity demands or Chinese collateral deals, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are increasingly the first numbers dialled.

A Different Style of Power: Fast, Flexible, and Quiet

Gulf capital operates by a different playbook. Western multilateral institutions move through committees, conditionality frameworks and public policy debates. Chinese lending has been structured around long, complex infrastructure contracts backed by commodities or strategic assets. Gulf money, by contrast, travels through sovereign deposits, equity stakes, and direct acquisitions. The logic is commercial, but the timing and choice of partner are deeply political.

A government facing a currency crisis might receive a central bank deposit within weeks of a high-level visit to Riyadh. A state seeking to plug a fiscal hole might find its privatisation pipeline suddenly populated by Gulf bidders. A port authority struggling to modernise might sign a long-term concession with a Gulf logistics firm that arrives with both capital and operational know-how. The paperwork matters, but relationships matter more.

Saudi Arabia: Deposits, Stabilisation and Strategic Patience

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the kingdom’s finance ministry have become quiet first responders in moments of macroeconomic stress. Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and several African states have all, at different moments, received Saudi deposits or pledges that helped stabilise foreign reserves and reassure markets. Those transactions rarely come with the detailed reform matrices of an IMF programme. They do, however, create long-term expectations of alignment on issues ranging from regional politics to investment access.

At the same time, PIF has moved beyond passive portfolio investments into targeted stakes in infrastructure, energy, technology and sports. Many of those deals take place in Europe and North America, but the Global South is no longer peripheral. Stakes in African logistics, Asian energy projects and regional financial institutions form part of a wider strategy: to be present wherever the next growth nodes are likely to emerge.

The UAE: Building Influence Through Ownership

If Saudi Arabia’s comparative advantage lies in its role as a stabilising lender and long-horizon investor, Abu Dhabi’s lies in its ability to acquire and operate assets. Through entities such as ADQ, Mubadala and a network of listed conglomerates, the UAE has become a prolific buyer of ports, telecoms towers, energy infrastructure and agribusiness chains from East Africa to South Asia.

Port concessions in the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean, equity stakes in mobile operators in Egypt and Pakistan, and investments in renewable projects from North Africa to Central Asia are all part of the same pattern. Rather than finance a government to build and run an asset, Abu Dhabi tends to take a share in the asset itself. That reduces sovereign borrowing but increases foreign ownership of critical infrastructure. For governments with limited fiscal space and urgent infrastructure needs, it can look like a reasonable trade. For citizens, the bargain is less straightforward.

Why Africa and Asia Are Turning to the Gulf

The rise of Gulf capital is not happening in a vacuum. It is taking place against a backdrop of tighter Western lending and more cautious Chinese engagement. After a decade of heavy Belt and Road activity, Beijing has become more selective, wary of bad debts and reputational costs. Western development banks, for their part, remain constrained by domestic politics and lengthy approval cycles. Many of their loans arrive bundled with fiscal consolidation and governance reforms that governments in crisis accept publicly but resent privately.

By contrast, Gulf offers are usually quicker, more discreet and less prescriptive. A deposit to a central bank, a commitment to roll over maturing debt, a sovereign fund’s anchor participation in a domestic listing, or a bid for a port can together stabilise a country’s external position without the theatre of a full-blown rescue programme. That makes Gulf capital particularly attractive to governments that are both fiscally stressed and politically fragile.

The Currency and Liquidity Dimension

Central-bank deposits and swap lines may look technical, but they are increasingly central to the Gulf’s influence. When Saudi Arabia or the UAE place billions in a partner country’s central bank, they are not only helping to defend an exchange rate. They are also gaining a direct channel into that country’s macroeconomic management. Renewals, rollovers and conditions become tools of quiet leverage.

In parts of North Africa, the Levant and South Asia, domestic debates about currency policy now implicitly include a Gulf variable: what Riyadh or Abu Dhabi will tolerate, support or avoid. The Gulf is not trying to build a rival monetary system in the conventional sense. It is, however, becoming an essential buffer in moments when access to dollars is tight and bond markets are unforgiving.

Ports, Food Security and the Indian Ocean Map

Nowhere is the strategic logic of Gulf capital clearer than in ports and food supply chains. The UAE’s global port operator and Saudi logistics arms have stitched together a string of terminals and logistics hubs stretching from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the Indian subcontinent and beyond. These assets secure routes for food and commodity imports into the Gulf, but they also position Gulf states as gatekeepers for regional trade flows.

At the same time, stakes in agribusiness, fertiliser plants and food distribution networks across Africa and South Asia support a long-term food security strategy. For host countries, this can bring investment, jobs and market access. It can also deepen dependence on external actors to move goods across their own borders. The geography of control is subtle: less about flags on maps, more about contracts in boardrooms.

Are the Gulf States Replacing China?

It would be a mistake to frame the Gulf simply as Beijing’s successor in the Global South. China still dominates when it comes to large-scale infrastructure finance and trade volumes. Western institutions still shape the rules of sovereign debt workouts, credit ratings and regulatory standards. What has changed is that the decision set for finance ministers and central bankers is no longer binary.

Instead of choosing between an IMF programme and a Chinese loan, many governments now craft a mosaic: a bit of IMF, some bond issuance, a Gulf deposit, and perhaps a port or telecom deal with Abu Dhabi or Riyadh. The world of development finance has become triangular rather than bipolar. In that triangle, the Gulf corner is distinctive because it combines deep liquidity, political discretion and a willingness to act quickly in crisis.

The Limits of Gulf Power

For all its new reach, Gulf financial power faces constraints. The first is cyclical: much of the capital deployed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE ultimately derives from hydrocarbon revenues. In a prolonged period of low oil prices or rapid decarbonisation, the fiscal space for large external bets would narrow. The second is political: many Gulf deals are elite-to-elite arrangements, negotiated behind closed doors. That secrecy may be efficient in the short run but risks domestic backlash in partner countries if citizens perceive assets as being sold cheaply or sovereignty as being diluted.

The third constraint is developmental. Gulf sovereign funds are sophisticated investors, but they are not development banks. They can stabilise, recapitalise and modernise specific assets. They are less equipped to overhaul entire public sectors, build institutions or accompany complex social reforms. In that sense, they can complement, but not fully substitute, traditional development actors.

A New Financial Order, Without a Manifesto

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Gulf’s rise is its lack of fanfare. There is no single grand initiative, no branded doctrine equivalent to Belt and Road, no strongly articulated alternative to Western conditionality. Instead, there is a steady accumulation of positions: in ports, banks, telecoms, power plants, sovereign bonds and central-bank balance sheets. For many countries in Africa and Asia, it has already become normal to have a Gulf actor on the cap table, in the data room or at the negotiating table.

The result is a quiet but profound shift. The financial architecture of the Global South is no longer written only in Washington and Beijing. It is increasingly edited in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi — in investment committee meetings, in decisions to roll over a deposit or underwrite an issuance, and in the strategic choices about where Gulf capital will next choose to land.