A permanent, dedicated hub for commerce, art, language, and bilateral collaboration between Africa and the UAE.
If you were in DIFC on Sunday night, you felt it before anyone said a word. The room at KIZA, Emirates Financial Towers, had that particular energy that only comes when people who have been quietly building something extraordinary finally stand in the same room and recognize each other.
Diplomats, founders, C-suite executives, creatives. Sixty-plus people who chose to build their lives and careers in the Gulf, and who are done being an afterthought in the region’s story. 
This was the UAE Africa Networking Group’s 10th Anniversary Africa Day, and the theme, “We Are Here — Today and Every Day,” wasn’t nostalgia. It was a claim.
Mr. Noureddine Daly, Acting Consul General of the Republic of Tunisia in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, participated on Sunday, May 24, 2025, in the Africa Day celebration in Dubai.
On this occasion, Mr. Daly delivered a speech in which he expressed his gratitude to the UAE-Africa Networking Group and its Chairman, Dr. William Stenhouse, for their tireless efforts in organizing the first edition of this celebration in Dubai, which commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa on May 25, 1963.
Ten years is a long time to build quietly
Dr. William Stenhouse, who founded the Group a decade ago, opened the evening with the kind of clarity that only comes from years of watching a community grow into itself. His message was simple: the work is not done. Continental unity, community economics, and investing in Africa’s youth aren’t abstract ideals, they are the blueprint. The diaspora in the Gulf has proximity to capital, networks, and influence that few communities on earth can match. The question is whether we use it with intention.
It landed the way it was meant to.
Then came the announcement that changed everything
Midway through the evening, Saran Sow Barry, CEO of Afro Baobab, took the stage and the room shifted.
The UAE is getting its first African Cultural Center ; not a pop-up, not a co-working space with an African flag on the wall, but a permanent, dedicated hub for commerce, art, language, and bilateral collaboration between Africa and the UAE. A physical address for a community that has spent decades building influence without a home base to show for it.
For those of us who have navigated the Gulf as professionals, the significance is visceral. It means our businesses, our culture, our conversations about the continent’s future have a place to happen that we own, that we built, that says: we were here, and we’re not going anywhere.
Twenty faces, fifty-four countries, one screen
Before the evening closed, the room went quiet for a world premiere. A specially produced video collective, filmed at Daily TV Studios in Dubai, brought together 20 African professionals and creatives based in the UAE. One by one, they spoke about their countries of origin, about what it means to represent the continent from here, about the future they’re betting on.
It was the kind of thing that reminds you why this community matters beyond the deal flow and the networking. There is something irreplaceable about Africans in the Gulf telling their own story, in their own words, on their own terms.
What this moment actually means
Africa Day Dubai 2026 was many things: a milestone, a celebration, a room full of people who have earned their seat at the table. But for the diaspora professional community in the Gulf, it was also a signal. The infrastructure is being built, the institutions are coming, and the narrative is shifting from “Africans in the Gulf” to “African excellence, headquartered in the Gulf.”
