Paper short abstract:

Tracking the financial mechanisms and exchange relations underlying the so-called "corporate gift" of electricity provision in three mining areas in Guinea, the article sheds light on the trend of "state-sponsored CSR" where companies only perform as givers and the State is the actual sponsor.

Paper long abstract:

Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement and control. Several authors refer to the notion of the "corporate gift" to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we track the underlying financial mechanisms and exchange relations for one such "gift": electricity provision in three of the major Guinean mining areas in the towns of Siguiri (Gold), Kamsar (Bauxite), and Mambia (Bauxite). Extensive research showed that in all three cases, the mining companies only performed as "givers" of electricity, but handed over the bill for this electricity provision to the state in the form of debt and suspension of royalties. Confronted with this curious fact of state-sponsored CSR, this article questions the foundations of the arguments around the notion of the corporate gift. In addition to empirically pointing to the emerging trend of extractive corporations acting as lenders, we come to the conclusion that the three electrification projects were at the same time acts of "political sacrifice" by differentiating the sponsors (sacrifiers) and the performers (sacrificers). We thus go beyond the obvious conclusion that mining companies try to maximize their legitimization efforts in an increasingly competitive environment and underlines the role of the indebted State in "company-community" relations and the maintenance of extractive enclaves.