Paper short abstract:

By examining riots in a rural Mozambican mining town and an elite coal-investment conference in Cape Town, the paper brings together disparate material and discursive spaces and contexts in which ‘investment’ and ‘dispossession’ are articulated in the Southern African political economy of energy

Paper long abstract:

The political economy of energy in Southern Africa is undergoing profound and rapid change. In response to international and regional demand, major energy extraction, production and transportation projects have started during the last decade, leading to a multitude of uneven impacts and developments across the subcontinent. Two different yet highly interconnected dynamics are central hereby: 'investment' and 'dispossession'. While rooted in seemingly familiar logics of uneven capitalist development, the paper argues that the disparate material and discursive spaces and contexts in which 'investment' and 'dispossession' are articulated are crucial to understand their meaning and effects. Two such spaces, both related to coal extraction in Mozambique, are brought together in the paper: riots in resettled rural villages in Tete province and a sanitized, five-star hotel investor's conference in Cape Town. The paper concludes that actors' ability to circulate across networks is crucial in understanding and connecting spaces of investment and dispossession