Paper short abstract:

I present a fresh nuanced understanding of the dynamics of extractive industries, particularly the Chinese mining firms in Zimbabwe. I bring the subaltern's mundane experiences to the workshop in the face of going green.

Paper long abstract:

My paper explores the complexities surrounding nickel and chrome mining in Guruve District, Zimbabwe, against heightened interest in disclosure, accountability, responsiveness, and governance within the extractive mining industry. Despite the formulation of standards and guidelines by governments and sector associations to promote human welfare, economic development, and service delivery, Zimbabwe faces challenges in realising these aspirations in the context of natural resource extraction. The study explores the contested, collusive, and complex nature of the nickel and chrome mining processes in Guruve. The study specifically focuses on the concerns raised by local communities regarding the environmental impacts of mining activities. The intricate relationships among the Chinese workforce at these mines, the local community, and political elites are examined. Despite extractive firms’ declarations of initiatives like corporate social responsibility (CSR), community share ownership trusts (CSOT), and partnerships with local authorities (LA), the study posits that these commitments largely remain unfulfilled. Grounded in post-development theory, the qualitative analysis challenges conventional notions of development, revealing deepening socio-economic inequalities in Guruve. Through interviews with community residents, mine workers, former employees, and mine managers, the study contends that the promised development benefits have not materialised, highlighting the discrepancy between promises and actual outcomes. Furthermore, the paper asserts that pursuing green energy through metal extraction has had adverse effects on producing communities, including environmental destruction, human injuries, and a lack of tangible development. This study underlines the nuanced implications of green energy endeavors on local socio-economic landscapes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the solar PV manufacturing supply chain, maps Africa’s mineral resources key for the manufacturing of solar PV technology, and trade in related activities in the technology’s value chain.

Paper long abstract:

Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is a key clean energy technology and an important source of clean electricity critical for the global green transition. Based on several sources of data on critical minerals and trade, we explore some critical questions about how Africa can leverage its natural resource endowments, trade, and latent productive capabilities for the manufacturing of solar PV technology, and the possible opportunities for regional integration and strategy. We found that African countries have limited opportunities in the manufacturing of solar PV technology. Diversifying into the existing global solar value chain may also be a high road as the market is already concentrated with strong entry barriers and gatekeepers. However, building a regional solar value chain provides an easier route, especially given that there are scattered resources (minerals and productive capabilities) and the region has a natural competitive advantage in solar power generation that could provide a sustainable pathway to meet Africa’s energy deficit. Based on these, we discuss the role of a regionalized solar PV industrial strategy for broad-based development of the continent.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the impact of energy transition metals in Zambia and Zimbabwe. It explores the growing expectations the anticipated ‘gold rush’ over critical minerals and how rising prices have altered the anticipation of what mining-based development can bring.

Paper long abstract:

With a growing discourse around the anticipated rise in demand for critical minerals and associated commodity price rises and what this means for actors in the Global North, less has been discussed on how these predictions will play out for mineral suppliers in the Global South and their impact on development. Southern Africa is one such region that will feel these effects; whilst not as endowed with critical minerals as Latin American states and Australia, it nevertheless contains moderate amount of resources to make it a medium sized player in a variety of critical minerals. This paper examines the impact that the increasing demand for energy transition metals has on the political economy of development in Southern Africa. It will explore the political economy of critical minerals in two countries; the cobalt and nickel sector in Zambia, and the nickel and lithium sector in Zimbabwe. Both countries have ever-growing expectations over mining-based development, particularly around critical minerals with an anticipated ‘gold rush’ in price and demand. It will examine how these rising prices has altered the anticipation of what mining-based development can bring to various actors, building on our knowledge of the role temporalities play during times of unprecedented change.

Paper short abstract:

Utilising a political economy approach, our paper examines how Ghana’s National Oil Company is responding to the global energy transition and the challenges that it is facing, and likely to face, in navigating the agenda

Paper long abstract:

At COP27 in November 2022, Ghana’s government unveiled an energy transition strategy that, in many senses, ran counter to global headwinds by pledging to significantly increase oil & gas (O&G) extraction (both because of the importance of oil exports in generating revenues for Ghana’s fiscally-constrained state and the role assigned to gas as Ghana’s domestic “transition fuel” up-to-and-beyond 2050). Ghana’s National Oil Company, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), looks set –rhetorically, at least– to play a critical role in delivering on this strategy, as it is being tasked with driving exploration and production activities as International Oil Companies (IOCs) increasingly divest. Our paper examines the challenges that GNPC is likely to face –and, indeed, is already facing– in assuming these responsibilities in reality. Adopting a multiscalar political economy approach, we argue that GNPC currently lacks the organisational capacities and autonomy to implement this high-risk strategy, as GNPC has increasingly been (mis)used by national political elites as a vehicle for dispersing patronage and influencing electoral outcomes within the context of Ghana’s highly-competitive, clientelist politics. This prevents GNPC from operating with a commercial, strategic mindset. Shifts in the global O&G industry are presenting further challenges for GNPC, as escalating IOC divestments are pressuring it into making rushed investment decisions and emboldening political elites –who are increasingly invoking the urgency of the global energy transition– to try and push through highly-particularistic deals with minimal scrutiny and debate. Ghana’s active civil-society has, though, consistently resisted these efforts to-date, tempering risks around stranded assets.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the nature of cobalt as a political artifact as an intersection between Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies and political theory to identify institution-led equity gaps in the sustainable development movement.

Paper long abstract:

Cobalt is a critical mineral; its role in modern renewable energy technologies is crucial for humanity’s drive toward accomplishing the UN SDGs. However, the 2002 Global Witness report exposed human rights violations in DRC; economic vulnerability, conflict, rape, child labor, and food insecurity. It is a matter of concern that such ironies are embedded in the global economy. In this paper, based on the arguments of Langdon Winner in a Marxist framework, I explore cobalt as a political artifact and how it can reveal equity gaps in the energy transition. To do so, first, this paper presents a theoretical framework based on Marx’s arguments of three interacting forces and associated despotism. To begin with, based on the Marxist institutional framework, this paper illustrates the exploitation in DRC that is embedded in cobalt building on Amartya Sen’s conceptualization of freedom as development. Then, based on Winner’s arguments, this paper emphasizes cobalt’s flexibility as a political artifact on the political implications of artifacts and assesses the political implications of cobalt in the institutional framework. Furthermore, based on the dynamic implications and Sheila Jasanoff’s co-production, I put forth the ‘political overlapping’ in cobalt. Lastly, I bring forth her arguments on Socio-technical Imaginaries (STI) to identify the equity gaps of the sustainable development movement in the context of the cobalt economy.

Paper short abstract:

We explore the local-level power dynamics that shape negotiations around the decisions that characterise the mining of critical minerals. We show how spirituality influences the negotiations among local actors around the emergence of the institutions intended to govern the mining of these minerals.

Paper long abstract:

The desperation to save the planet has necessitated the rash for lithium mining to Fastrack the energy transition agenda. Ongoing debates among academic, policy and civil society actors have partly focused on how negotiations around the mining of these critical minerals can depart from the social and environmental cost that characterised conventional mining. Discussions have largely explored the asymmetric power dynamics between national and local actors that define negotiations around the institutions developed to govern the extraction of these minerals. However, there is limited understanding of how power dynamics at the local level shape these negotiations. Particularly, how contextual dynamics, such as culture, tradition and religious beliefs influence institutional bargains at the local level are underexplored. Using the Ewoyaa Lithium Project in Ghana as a case study, we show how traditional religious beliefs shape negotiations at the local level. Through ethnographic research, we find that the prophetic powers of local gods are instrumentalised by traditional authorities to induce consent from the local people on a wide range of institutional arrangements. In this presentation, we show how the agency of local actors are not just limited by the power of national actors but also supernatural phenomenon. The research reinforces the need to emphasise contextual factors in understanding the emergence of institutions that shape the mining of critical minerals, accentuating the significance of spirituality and religion in the process.

Paper short abstract:

This article aims to set out a research agenda for investigating the spillover effects of green FDIs in SSA. Particular attention is dedicated to spillover effects arousing from FDIs in the mining of critical minerals and in the renewable energy sector.

Paper long abstract:

One consequence of the world's growing interest in critical minerals in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the increase in Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) flowing to African countries, leading to both direct and indirect economic effects. This article aims to establish a research agenda for investigating the spillover effects of FDIs in SSA resulting from investments in green transformation. Spillover effects, defined as the transfer of technology, encompassing hardware, software, and brainware (Nowakowski 2005), from foreign firms to local entrepreneurs or the broader local economy, are often considered catalysts for industrialization and structural transformation.Historically, FDIs in the mining sector have shown minimal forward and backward linkages, operating as capital-intensive enclaves with limited local participation and inputs (Hirschman 1958; Seers 1964), resulting in minimal spillover effects on local economies. Consequently, a pertinent research avenue for contemporary studies is to verify whether this time the character of the green FDIs in the mining sector are different? What are the differences in the potential of foreign investors, the capacity of local companies, and the institutional settings in local economies compared to past scenarios? If material differences exist, are they sufficient to bring about the long-awaited structural transformation in African economies? Moreover, in recent years, green FDIs in Africa have extended beyond the mining sector, exploring the solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal potential of the continent. Investigating spillover effects from green investments in non-extractive sectors represents another key research avenue.

Paper short abstract:

This study examines the power dynamics and changes for local communities in the extant geopolitics of critical resources.

Paper long abstract:

Presently, debates have risen around the ongoing geopolitics of “white gold” in the global energy policy discourse, in which lithium has become a key commodity for energy transitions. Though not a new phenomenon in Africa, the novel lithium rush in Zimbabwe like any other extractive commodity is imbued in the tales of extremes and enclaves in which: extractives have been historically and concurrently characterized by legacies of exclusionary enclaves, land degradation, accumulation by dispossession, contamination of waterways and the somehow fleeting comforts of prosperity. Given this caveat. The study seeks to fill the gap in literature by analyzing the politics of and the different forms of corporate social responsibility, environmental responsibility and sustainable business approaches of both Western and Chinese mining companies in lithium extraction and processing in Zimbabwe. This will help to explain how the government, companies are approaching, advancing environmental, social and corporate mining standards in lithium extraction and the ways in which communities now either act to obstruct, or themselves become entangled in extractive industrialism. Currently the paradox is on how to strike a balance between shifting policy directions in the mining for the energy transition, the promotion of responsible mining practices, investments in critical resources and the case for community engagement through communities being accorded opportunities for effective participation in the creation of a shared value.

Paper short abstract:

Communities in the global South adversely affected by extractive industries are increasingly turning to transnational litigation to challenge environmental degradation and related rights violations. This paper explore how transnational litigation may challenge the terms of mineral extraction.

Paper long abstract:

The extraction of minerals critical to renewable energy technologies threatens the sustainability of local environments and livelihoods in resource abundant countries. As the demand for minerals increases, communities and states in the global South are bearing the brunt of localised environmental damage (Cullet & Koonan 2019). Coalitions of communities and campaigners are increasingly turning to courts of law to seek justice over such environmental degradation and related rights violations (Adelman 2021).

Where environmental litigation has largely concerned actors within the global North, new strategies are emerging that leverage Northern institutions to hold transnational corporations to account for harm caused in the global South (Yu 2022). New laws passed in several European countries allow corporations to be held accountable in the jurisdiction of the parent company for actions committed elsewhere by a subsidiary (Weller & Pato 2018). Examining how institutions, campaign coalitions and corporations transcend political boundaries, this paper explores the power relations shaping how such litigation strategies may foster environmental justice. This paper draws on recent cases from Nigeria and Zambia and asks what factors enable communities to challenge the terms of extraction in the face of a growing demand for minerals.