Unreliable electricity costs African economies an estimated 2 to 4 percent of GDP every year. Businesses cannot plan production schedules around power that cuts out unpredictably. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, who chairs Inmā Emirates Holdings, has built an investment portfolio targeting precisely these markets where infrastructure absence constrains economic participation.
Without functioning ports, agricultural exports rot at inland collection points while shipping containers sit empty at berths too congested to process them. Without digital identity systems, rural populations remain locked out of formal banking, insurance and government services.
Without stable power, manufacturers cannot commit to delivery schedules that international buyers require.
Counting What Infrastructure Absence Costs
Annual average losses from disasters and infrastructure disruption exceed $170 billion in Asia and the Pacific alone, according to Asian Development Bank Institute research. Of total global climate financing, less than 4 percent goes to resilience.
Every dollar invested in climate-resilient infrastructure yields approximately four dollars in benefits, according to the OECD. Yet capital continues flowing disproportionately to markets where infrastructure already functions, leaving the highest-need regions chronically underfunded.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for approximately 85 percent of the global population without electricity access. Eighteen of the 20 countries with the largest electricity deficits are in the region. Population growth outpaces electrification, meaning the absolute number of people without reliable power is growing even as connection rates improve.
Africa receives only 2 percent of global clean energy investment despite hosting 20 percent of the world’s population, according to the IEA. Debt servicing costs consume over 85 percent of total energy investment in the region, diverting capital from generation and grid expansion into servicing obligations accumulated during previous economic downturns.
Energy as the Precondition For Everything Else
Ghana’s 250-megawatt power plant, financed through Gulf-based investment, addressed an electricity shortfall that had been costing the national economy billions in lost industrial output. Equatorial Guinea’s completed 36.6-megawatt facility strengthened grid reliability for a population that had been managing around intermittent supply.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum’s energy investments through Inmā Emirates Holdings include a 15-year green energy program in Pakistan, developing 1,200 megawatts of solar and wind capacity. Workforce training and supply chain integration run alongside construction, creating institutional capacity that persists after physical infrastructure is complete.
Equatorial Guinea’s completed facility illustrates a pattern visible across Inmā’s environmental resilience work: Gulf investors addressing immediate reliability gaps while establishing presence in markets where long-term energy demand growth will require successive rounds of investment.
Ghana’s larger plant addresses industrial-scale requirements in a West African economy where manufacturing expansion depends entirely on predictable power access.
Energy projects with extended timelines produce different community outcomes than short-cycle construction contracts.
When local technicians are trained to maintain solar arrays and wind turbines, employment extends from the construction phase into decades of operations. When domestic suppliers qualify to participate in equipment procurement, foreign exchange savings compound year over year. Inmā’s resilient communities approach has been documented as part of this longer-horizon model.
Ports And Airports As Economic Gateways
For Pakistan, where external trade accounts for a substantial share of GDP, the Karachi Port modernisation under a half-century concession with Abu Dhabi Ports anchors more than logistics improvement. Port efficiency determines whether exporters can meet delivery windows, whether import costs remain competitive, and whether the country can participate fully in regional trade networks.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum has pursued similar gateway infrastructure in the Caribbean. A multi-year agreement for operations and expansion of Barbados’s Grantley Adams International Airport, brokered through the investment team coordinating his cross-region work, addresses a constraint specific to tourism-dependent economies: airport capacity directly limits visitor numbers, which directly limits GDP.
What Shifts When Digital Infrastructure Reaches Excluded Populations?
Guyana’s five-year National ID Program, backed by Inmā Emirates Holdings, delivers digital identity infrastructure for a population navigating rapid economic transformation driven by offshore oil revenues. Verified digital identity opens access to formal banking, credit, insurance, and government services for citizens previously outside those systems.
Smart device manufacturing in Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea addresses a different dimension of digital exclusion. Inmā’s deal record across these markets shows facilities that build domestic production capacity rather than importing finished technology:
- Local workers gain technical skills in assembly, quality control, and maintenance that transfer across industries
- Domestic suppliers develop standards compatible with global value chains, creating export potential alongside import substitution
- Countries reduce foreign exchange outflows from technology purchases while building the industrial base for longer-term self-sufficiency
Community Resilience Requires Staying Power
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum’s portfolio operates on project timelines averaging over a decade, a departure from the three-to-five-year cycles that dominate private investment. Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure analysts, representing 50 member countries, have documented how short-horizon investment produces construction activity without the institutional capacity needed for lasting results.
Coordinating ventures of this scope falls to the Private Office of H.H. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, the longer-running entity that sits alongside Inmā and has handled cross-border deal coordination for over a decade.
Inmā Emirates Holdings was launched in October 2025 to consolidate this activity under a single holding entity built around the government-partnership approach.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum has structured Inmā around the premise that communities most in need of capital are also those where short-duration investment consistently underdelivers. Ports require decades of operational partnership to transform trade capacity. Energy programs need 15-year timelines to train workforces alongside building generation assets.
Digital governance systems take years to integrate into the institutional fabric of a nation. Short-cycle investors exit before any of these processes reach maturity, leaving behind physical assets without the human and institutional capacity needed to operate them effectively.
Community resilience is not a product that can be purchased and delivered. It accumulates through sustained investment in the systems that enable economic participation: reliable power, functioning trade infrastructure and a digital identity that connects citizens to formal institutions. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum and Inmā Emirates Holdings are testing whether private capital, structured for duration and matched with sovereign partners, can produce those outcomes at scale.
