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Poli20


Infrastructural futures: situating Africa within global connectivity initiatives [CRG African Politics and International Relations] 
Convenors:
Tim Zajontz (Technische Universität Dresden)
Jörg Wiegratz (University of Leeds)
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Chair:
Padraig Carmody (Trinity College Dublin)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Politics and International Relations (x) Infrastructure (y)
Location:
Philosophikum, S61
Sessions:
Friday 2 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin

Short Abstract:

This panel is concerned with the politics and political economy of competing connectivity initiatives in Africa, notably China's Belt and Road Initiative and Western geo-strategic reactions, such as the EU's Global Gateway and the US-led Build Back Better World.

Long Abstract:

Africa is central to contemporary processes of global respacing and, concretely, to global connectivity initiatives, such as China's Belt and Road Initiative, the EU's Global Gateway and the US-led Build Back Better World. Notwithstanding certain differences, official narratives surrounding these grand initiatives all promise mutual economic benefits, as well as hypermodern and greener futures for African societies.

The centrality of Africa within these global connectivity initiatives is arguably owed to intensifying geo-political and geo-economic competition between China and the 'West' in the region. As such, these initiatives constitute spatial strategies that are aimed at gaining access to African markets and strategic resources, as well as to maintain or enhance geo-political influence across the continent. African state and non-state actors, for their part, have made use of renewed external interests in 'infrastructuring' Africa to advance their own political, economic and developmental objectives.

This panel is concerned with the politics and political economy of competing connectivity initiatives in Africa. It is interested in how African decision-makers and non-state actors (at and across different levels of governance) and their different external 'partners' articulate, negotiate and contest normative and material aspects that arise in the context of global connectivity initiatives and intensifying geo-strategic competition. One key analytical interest lies in the extent to which Africa's integration into such initiatives aligns with existing national/regional/continental development schemes and politics. The panel explicitly invites comparative papers and/or contributions that investigate neo-/post-colonial (dis)continuities in Africa's infrastructural futures and contradictions that arise from connectivity-based capital accumulation in Africa.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 2 June, 2023, -