When China’s Belt and Road Initiative was unveiled in 2013, it was sold as a grand connective vision: ports and pipelines, highways and industrial corridors, binding Eurasia together with Chinese capital and construction.
In the Middle East and North Africa, it looks more like a mosaic. Less a single sweeping program here BRI is a patchwork of individual deals, built around oil in some places, factories and logistics in others, and a handful of states that dominate the ledger.
MBN’s China Tracker dataset compiled from official BRI portal updates counts 418 projects across 22 MENA countries since 2021. The projects are not spread evenly. A country ranking by number of projects shows a steep drop-off after the top tier: Saudi Arabia leads by a wide margin, followed by the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, with Algeria and Egypt next in line. Beyond that, most countries cluster at much lower totals.
At a time when China’s the leading trade partner and increasingly dominant economic player for the region, its approach with BRI offers a view into how and where Beijing is placing its bets.
The MBN China Tracker’s sector-by-country data helps explain what those partnerships look like on the ground. Saudi Arabia is not simply the most active venue for Chinese state companies – it is also the most diversified. According to the tracker, Chinese projects are spread across manufacturing, renewable energy, oil and gas, real estate, and transportation infrastructure, a portfolio broader than any other country in the dataset.
In other words, Saudi Arabia is where Belt and Road looks closest to what it was meant to be: a whole-of-economy effort that extends from energy into industrial capacity and domestic development, increasingly aligned with Riyadh’s Vision 2030 agenda to localize manufacturing, expand non-oil sectors, and build new industrial and logistics hubs beyond crude exports.
The United Arab Emirates, second in the project ranking, is different. BRI projects cluster around ports, transportation infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and real estate.
That is consistent with the UAE’s role as a regional logistics and re-export hub, a place where Chinese firms build the connective tissue of trade, from ports to industrial zones. In 2025 alone, at least four new contracts were awarded to Chinese state companies in Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Economic Zones (KEZAD).
Iraq, which ranks third by the number of Belt and Road projects in the region, shows how China has paired commercial investment with development initiatives. Chinese engagement there remains heavily focused on oil and gas, reflecting Iraq’s role as a major crude supplier and China’s effort to diversify its energy sources. At the same time, China has taken on visible public works linked to Iraq’s reconstruction. In late 2021, Iraqi authorities signed contracts with Chinese firms, including PowerChina and Sinotech, to build 1,000 schools nationwide, a program that has continued through 2024 and into 2025. Together, the oil projects and school construction illustrate a broader Belt and Road approach that combines economic interests with tangible development deliverables for host countries.
Further down the ranking, Egypt stands out for the type of Belt and Road projects China is pursuing rather than their sheer number. Chinese activity there focuses on manufacturing, transportation infrastructure, and real estate, particularly around the Suez Canal corridor. The emphasis reflects Beijing’s interest in using Egypt as a production and logistics hub linking Asia, Africa, and Europe, while aligning with Cairo’s push to attract foreign investment and expand industrial capacity.
In North Africa, countries such as Algeria and Morocco are seeing Chinese activity focused on construction-adjacent sectors, power generation, and transport, reflecting a development agenda centered more on urban growth and infrastructure than on hydrocarbons.
Across the region, manufacturing appears repeatedly in the data, making it one of the most common sectors in China’s Belt and Road projects.
This pattern reflects a key feature of Beijing’s approach: the development of industrial parks and production zones that group factories with transport links and basic infrastructure. These projects are often anchored or developed by Chinese state-backed firms, but typically host a mix of state-owned, private Chinese, and local companies. In the Middle East and North Africa, the data suggests this model is not confined to a single country but recurs across several, pointing to a broader effort to embed Chinese companies more deeply in regional supply chains.
Min Mitchell
Min Mitchell is former President and CEO of Frontline Media Fund and Executive Editor at Radio Free Asia.
