Paper short abstract:

International oil companies (IOCs) continue to be an “unsettling” feature in the development landscape. Drawing on CSR and vocational education research, our Uganda case study demonstrates the incompatibilities of IOCs and multi-actor skills development initiatives. We ask what next, post Covid-19?

Paper long abstract:

International oil extractive multinational corporations (IOCs) have been and continue to be an “unsettling” feature in the development landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on critical CSR literature, this paper synthesises three phases of IOC unsettling: exploitation, ‘reactive’ CSR, and the current phase of multi-actor development interventions. We review these phases through the lens of vocational education and a case study of IOC engagement in skills development initiatives in Hoima, Uganda. The Uganda case shows that the current multi-actor phase seeks to incorporate programmatic structures and processes to mitigate challenges associated with the exploitation and ‘reactive’ phases. For example, the multi-actor ‘Skills for Oil and Gas in Africa’ programme attempted to focus on value chains rather than the narrow instrumental occupational priorities of IOCs. However, we demonstrate that such attempts have largely failed due to the unsettling reality that issues of control and historical, environmental and socio-economic factors point to incompatibilities within multi-actor skills development initiatives involving IOCs. In the Uganda case, these include oil price volatility, political turbulence, Covid-19, internal IOC tensions between CSR and core operations vis-à-vis skills development, and cultural and environmental tensions linked to oil ‘development’ in the region. We conclude by exploring the question: what next for IOCs and multi-actor skills development initiatives post Covid-19.