Salalah forum adds China to Oman-Africa investment push

SALALAH, SEPTEMBER 9
The 2nd Omani Afro-Chinese Business Forum opened in Salalah on Wednesday with the launch of a digital business platform and the addition of Chinese participation to an initiative that began in Muscat last year as an Oman-Africa business gathering.
The oman-africa.com platform was launched during the forum, held under the auspices of Eng Ahmed bin Hassan al Dheeb, Vice-Chairman of the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ).
According to the forum programme, the multilingual platform will provide electronic services and business packages aimed at facilitating commercial links between Oman and countries in the Horn of Africa.
The second edition broadens the format of the Omani-African Business Forum held in Muscat in 2025 by bringing Chinese businesses and investors into discussions alongside African and Omani companies.
Majid Said Akak, chairman of the organising committee, identified the African countries represented in the initiative as Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Djibouti.
Akak said the forum’s central objectives included attracting investment and encouraging African businesses and capital to establish operations in Oman.
He said the presence of investors from the participating African countries had increased by more than 400 per cent compared with the two years preceding the first forum, citing recently issued official statistics.
He also linked the first edition to efforts to establish direct air connectivity between Oman and Somalia. That connection became operational this month. SalamAir launched the first scheduled non-stop service between Muscat and Mogadishu on September 3, with two flights a week. The airline has said the route is intended to support travel, trade and business links, although it has not attributed the decision to the forum.
A separate claim from the African delegation suggested that some companies were considering Oman as a new commercial base.
Abdulwali Bashir, a Djiboutian businessman speaking on behalf of African participants, said companies involved in the initiative had been attracted by the earlier forum to shift their centre of business from China to Oman.
“We are a group of companies who were attracted by the previous forum to transfer their centre of business from China to the Sultanate of Oman,” Bashir said.
China’s inclusion gives the second edition a substantially larger commercial context. China-Africa trade reached a record $348 billion in 2025 and continued to expand in 2026, reaching about RMB1.41 trillion, or roughly $207 billion, in the first half of the year, up 19.6 per cent year on year.
By comparison, the latest broad regional breakdown available through the World Bank’s WITS database puts Oman’s merchandise trade with sub-Saharan Africa at just under $4 billion in 2023.
The figures cover different years and geographical groupings, but underline the difference in scale between Oman’s existing African trade and the wider China-Africa commercial relationship.
For Oman, the commercial question is whether its economic zones, ports and logistics infrastructure can convert part of those expanding links into investment, distribution, processing and trade activity based in the Sultanate.
Mustafa bin Abdulqadir al Ghassani, representing the Oman-China Friendship Association, said the next phase should move “from communication to partnership, and from partnership to tangible projects and initiatives”.
He identified investment, energy, logistics, tourism, industry, food security, technology and innovation, education and culture among the areas where cooperation could deepen.
Al Ghassani said Oman’s location between Asia and Africa could support a wider role connecting Chinese and African businesses, while the Belt and Road Initiative could offer a framework for joint investment, infrastructure development and knowledge transfer.
The investment proposition was also set out directly to participating companies.
OPAZ presented an overview of its economic and free zones, outlining the services, facilities and investor-support mechanisms available to companies seeking to establish or expand operations in Oman.
The presentation covered the role of the zones in facilitating industrial, logistics and commercial investment, complementing the forum’s wider attempt to attract African and Chinese businesses into projects in the Sultanate.
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology presented the transport and logistics infrastructure supporting that proposition.
The ministry said the contribution of the transport and storage sector rose 5.4 per cent from RO 2.23 billion in 2024 to RO 2.35 billion in 2025.
It has set a RO 3 billion target for 2026, which would require growth of about 27.7 per cent from the 2025 level — a substantially faster pace than the growth recorded last year.
The presentation delivered in Salalah also set a longer-term target of RO 8 billion by 2030.
Infrastructure highlighted to participants included an 18-metre navigational depth at the Port of Salalah and a 20,000-square-metre cargo terminal at Salalah Airport.
Akak said the programme also includes field visits to the Salalah Free Zone and Port of Salalah, allowing participating investors to examine infrastructure and meet officials and Omani businesses directly.
The formal sessions were followed by business-to-business meetings involving Omani, African and Chinese companies.