WASSAP: the Africa – West Asia Podcast

In this inaugural episode of WASSAP: The Africa-West Asia Podcast, hosts Désirée Custers and Hubert Kinkoh introduce the WASSAP project (West Asia – Sub‑Saharan Africa Partnerships in Flux) and set the stage for the podcast series. Together with Jan Hanrath, CEO and co-founder of CARPO, and Dr Sebastian Sons, Senior Researcher of CARPO, the episode explores why relations between Gulf countries and Sub‑Saharan Africa are becoming increasingly strategic, how these partnerships are changing in a multipolar global order, how they different between Gulf countries, and why they matter for policymakers, researchers, and European audiences alike. A central focus of the discussion is WASSAP’s flagship publication which introduces the NML-framework (Networkability, Maneuverability, and Leveragability) as a novel lens for understanding agency in Gulf-Africa relations. The conversation highlights how African actors exercise strategic agency and challenges common assumptions that frame these relationships as one‑sided or purely driven by Gulf states.