US$7 Trillion In Southsouth Trade Puts The World's Fastest-Growing Economies At The Centre Of The Next Global Trading System, AIM Congress Hears

(MENAFN- Mid-East Info) “Governments set the frame. Business lays the cables. Neither carries the load alone”: keynote says the routes and partnerships that were held during this year's disruption to Gulf shipping were built years earlier, and that the next ones must be built before they are needed.

H.E. Badr Jafar, Special Envoy of the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs for Business and Philanthropy, challenges“the myth of the winner who takes all” and names philanthropic capital as the“third builder” of the world's trade architecture.

Dubai, September 2026: The world's fastest-growing economies are not the periphery of the next global trading system but the place where it is being built, AIM Congress 2026 heard yesterday, with South–South trade now worth nearly US$7 trillion a year, roughly a quarter of all goods traded globally, and the architecture of trade increasingly built government to government and then business to business.

The message came in the keynote of the Congress's Global Markets Pillar at Dubai World Trade Centre, delivered by H.E. Badr Jafar, Special Envoy of the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs for Business and Philanthropy, who said the world's trading system had been put to the test this year, and that the key parts of those were built long before they were needed. Pointing to the way ports on the UAE's east coast, and overland corridors, absorbed rerouted cargo within weeks.

H.E. Badr Jafar stated,“None of that capacity was improvised. It was built years earlier, through corridors that already existed, partnerships that already existed, and trust that already existed. That is the first lesson of this year. The question is no longer: how efficient is Plan A? The question is: how credible is Plan B?”

“The UAE has signed nearly 40 economic partnership agreements in record time, and half are already in force. Governments agree with the principles. Business puts them into practice. Government to government, then business to business, node to node.” H.E. Badr Jafar added.

Commenting on the importance of trust in an increasingly digitized system, H.E. Badr Jafar stated,“AI can now reroute a supply chain before a human has finished reading the alert. But the more intelligent trade becomes, the more it depends on something ancient: trust. Data has to be trusted. Standards have to connect. And when the system breaks, people have to pick up the phone,” he said.”

H.E. Badr Jafar went on to identify philanthropic capital as a third, under-recognized builder of trade architecture, saying“There is a third builder: philanthropic capital. It is patient. It is catalytic. And it asks a different question. Not 'what is the return?' but 'what is missing?' What is missing, in so many places, is the connective tissue. Philanthropy is beginning to fund that tissue, quietly and deliberately. Government holds the frame. Business lays the cables. Philanthropy strengthens the nodes. That is a whole-of-society architecture that the UAE believes passionately in. And it is the kind that holds.”

H.E. Badr Jafar said the UAE had strived to keep its doors open through oil shocks, a financial crisis, a pandemic and this year's turbulence, and to build more than one gateway, on the Gulf and on the ocean beyond it, with non-oil foreign trade up 13 per cent in the first half of 2026. He commented,“That was not luck. It was built long before it was needed. And none of this was built for the UAE alone. A gateway is built for others to pass through it.”

The keynote opened the Global Markets Pillar's leaders' session on trade competitiveness, with government and private-sector leaders from Cambodia, South Africa and Uganda. The opening day of the Congress also heard from H.H. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah; H.E. Taye Atske Selassie, President of Ethiopia; H.E. Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of Foreign Trade; H.E. Rustam Minnikhanov, President of the Republic of Tatarstan; H.E. Dorjkhand Togmid, Deputy Prime Minister of Mongolia; H.E. Dr. Mohan Yadav, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh; Mohamed Alabbar, Founder of Emaar Properties; and Sangbu Kim, World Bank Group Vice President for Digital and AI.

AIM Congress 2026, the 15th edition of the Annual Investment Meeting, runs from 7 to 9 September at Dubai World Trade Centre under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, under the theme“Reshaping Global Prosperity: Unlocking New Investment Pathways Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Future”. Organized by the AIM Global Foundation in partnership with the UAE Ministry of Foreign Trade, last year's edition drew more than 15,800 participants from 181 countries.

About H.E. Badr Jafar:

H.E. Badr Jafar is the Special Envoy of the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs for Business and Philanthropy and Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Enterprises. He is a business leader, entrepreneur and advocate for stronger collaboration between business, government and philanthropy to advance sustainable and inclusive economic development, and the author of The Business of Philanthropy.

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