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Externalizing the costs of the global green transition: The paradox of mineral wealth and resource grabs in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo
This paper highlights the negative social and environmental outcomes of the unfolding reconfiguration of global capitalism symbolized by electrification, robotization and artificial intelligence. These ‘green’ transformations signify an epochal shift of fossil fuel-based industrialization to electrification which has intensified the need to secure ‘critical minerals’ for the industrialization of the West and China. Dominant narratives of a just energy transition have a legitimizing effect to the ongoing violent removals of people from resource rich lands in remote regions of Africa. These removals are a precursor to land and resource grabs justified by the logic of neo-liberal Foreign Direct Investments promoted by resource rich but poor African countries. The disastrous consequences of this green extractivism implicates Western governments, China and African governments who have promoted the expropriation indigenous lands for the benefit of a changing global capitalist landscape towards green profitability.
The paper is based on a review of relevant literature, preliminary fieldwork in the Zambia and DRC Copperbelt and in Zimbabwe’s lithium rich Goromonzi and Mberngwa rural areas.