Paper short abstract:

Contemporary resource nationalism in Africa has featured prominently in the rhetoric of Zimbabwe’s government. However, regulatory innovations in the 2000s have produced contradictory outcomes in the context of elite interests and corporate power. Is a popular extractivist agenda still feasible?

Paper long abstract:

Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF has been an active proponent of regulatory reforms in the extractives sector aimed at recovering greater revenue, local participation and strengthened local supply chains. These initiatives have been accompanied by a strident political vocabulary which has drawn on key themes emerging from contemporary resource nationalism in Southern Africa. However, the persistence of contradictory political-economic dynamics in the extractive sector – elite interests embedded in state power, weak state institutional capacity, corporate resilience and volatile state-society relations – have blunted the potential of policy advances. This paper explores these dynamics and their outcomes through case studies of indigenisation and local content reforms in the mining sector. It focuses on the disconnect between policy formulation and implementation on the one hand, and the role and influence of intended policy beneficiaries, on the other. It argues that the trajectories of resource nationalist policy innovations have been consistently derailed by the exigencies of elite political and corporate structural power, and sees institutional weaknesses in the state as a critical obstacle to the mounting of a more robust, inclusive, popular and consensus-based approach to extractives-led development in Zimbabwe. Despite the Zimbabwe government’s extractives-based developmentalist policy thrust, the structural and narrow political underpinnings of its approach raise important questions about the feasibility of its neo-extractivist agenda.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the failure of the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) government to secure the electoral support of Copperbelt mine communities in the 2021 Zambian election, despite its implementation of ‘resource nationalist’ policies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the failure of the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) government to secure the electoral support of Copperbelt mine communities in the 2021 Zambian election, despite its implementation of ‘resource nationalist’ policies. These policies, which ended foreign ownership of two of Zambia’s leading mine companies, were ostensibly designed to appeal to Copperbelt residents in general and mineworkers in particular, who had since the mid-2000s expressed growing discontent at the failure of foreign owners to develop their mines, create secure jobs and contribute positively to the Zambian economy. While the articulation of such policies had secured PF electoral support in 2011, 2015 and 2016, their implementation by the Lungu presidency was followed by decisive electoral defeat, with Copperbelt voters swinging away from PF and towards the opposition UPND, which won the Zambian presidency in 2021. This paper uses electoral data and interviews with mineworkers to explain the disjuncture between what it characterises as popular ‘resource nationalism from below’ and PF’s ‘resource nationalism from above’. In doing so it contributes to understandings of the relationship between resource nationalism, electoral competition and political change.

Paper short abstract:

State-mandated local development refers to both the process and the instruments that the state has used to revise the sub-national distribution of resource rents. The paper argues that it is co-produced by multiple actors through their adaptive interpretations and selective implementation.

Paper long abstract:

State-mandated local development refers to both the process and the instruments that the state has used to revise the sub-national distribution of resource rents. In the Guinean context, it is through the creation of new tax (superficial tax), tax-like funds (funds for local economic development) and the formalisation of voluntary corporate payments (Community development agreements) that the state seeks additional resource rent through intervention/mediation in business-social relations. The paper argues that state-mandated local development is increasingly co-produced by multiple actors through their adaptive interpretations and selective implementation of post-neoliberal resource governance policies. Local decentralised state agents, traditional authorities, Chinese professionals, and community members interact with each other based on adaptive interpretations and selective implementations of 'local development' with rules and resources provided by normative texts. This paper uses controversy as a prism of analysis that disentangles intertwined positions, interpretations and practices to reveal general patterns of business-society relations in three mining zones in which Chinese companies operate in Guinea. Controversies are grouped into three clusters: expectations of corporate contribution, administrative encroachment on local lifeworlds, and autochtonisation of local content.

Paper short abstract:

Gas extraction in the Rovuma Basin may invoke developmental state aspirations on both sides of the Tanzanian-Mozambican border; yet the political-structural conditions for reinvesting extractive rents in industrial and social development are very different.

Paper long abstract:

The offshore Rovuma Basin on the border between Mozambique and Tanzania and the prospects of simultaneous extraction of natural gas reserves in the basin, offer the opportunity to compare two real-life experiments of post-neoliberal extractivism in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent research literature on petroleum policy and use insights from this work to assess the developmental potential of offshore gas production in Tanzania and Mozambique. The paper starts out understanding changes of the ideal type East Asian ‘Developmental State’ model due to the current stage of post-neoliberal global economy and to what extent, and how, this model has inspired the design of different extractivist trajectories in Mozambique and Tanzania. Despite clear risks of “resource (or ‘presource’) curse” in both countries, the development of offshore gas projects opens possibilities to reinvest extractive rents: on the one hand, in industrial development that goes beyond “enclave” structures; on the other, in social programs that address extreme poverty. Review of the existing literature indicates that Tanzania has better conditions to harness this potential than Mozambique. Stronger and more autonomous state institutions in the former may lead to a more effective regulation and taxation of the extractive industries for reinvestments in other sectors. The dominance of predatory political networks in the latter favors a model of rapid revenue generation that undermine coordinated plans and policies necessary for sustainable economic and social development.

Paper short abstract:

Through an analysis of the ongoing debate about the future of EGC, set up with the aim of increasing government control over the artisanal mining and trade of Congolese cobalt, this paper seeks to investigate conflicting views on the role of the Congolese state in resource-based development.

Paper long abstract:

Due to the strategic importance of copper and cobalt for the so-called green transition, Katanga, situated in the southeastern part of the DRC, has witnessed a growing competition between industrial and artisanal mining actors for access to mineral-bearing land in recent years. This has been accompanied by rising international attention to the conditions in which mineral ores are mined and traded. Aiming to improve the reputation of the Katangese mining industry, several initiatives have been taken to stimulate Corporate Social Responsibility, to promote partnerships between industrial mining companies and artisanal miners, and to increase the transparency of copper and cobalt chains through the introduction of due diligence mechanisms, certification schemes and new forms of technology such as blockchains. Until now, research about the formalization of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Katanga has mainly focused on the unintended side-effects of corporate-led initiatives for ‘responsible’ mining. Nevertheless, Deberdt (2021) has rightly drawn attention to a highly remarkable attempt by the Congolese government to regain control over the artisanal mining sector through the establishment of the state-owned company Entreprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC), which was given a five-year monopoly on the purchase, processing and marketing of all artisanally mined cobalt in the provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba. The aim of this paper is to use the ongoing debate about the future of EGC as an entry point to bring to light and analyze conflicting views on the role of the Congolese state in resource-based development.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how the launch of the DRC’s state-owned mining company EGC uses a certain ‘responsible sourcing’ discourse to legitimize involvement in the artisanal small-scale cobalt mining sector, and if and how this reflects historical patterns of exploitation.

Paper long abstract:

In reaction to the global focus on ‘battery minerals’ along with increased sustainability pressures, a new ‘responsible sourcing framework’ is changing the DRC’s cobalt supply chain governance. State and non-state actors are actively cooperating based on their common stated goal of making the cobalt supply chain more responsible. This includes the state-owned mining company Enterprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC).

The launch of EGC fits into the trend of resource nationalism, as it is an attempt to increase the DRC state’s ownership and control over cobalt reserves. Tying into the resource-development nexus, EGC focusses on the artisanal cobalt sector and aims “to clean up and formalize the sector in order to defend vulnerable communities”. While EGC increases the state’s access to cobalt, it also once again emphasizes mineral extraction as a potential driver of socio-political and economic development.

However, decolonial and legal pluralist scholars have demonstrated how the fixation on formalization through state-centric laws and institutions reflects colonial heritages of exploitation. Whereas EGC is presented as a game changer, a critical analysis is necessary to unveil if and how colonial and historical patterns of exploitation are possibly reinforced. This paper analyses how EGC fits into a ‘responsible sourcing assemblage’ and the extent to which a certain discourse is used to legitimize activities. Evaluating the relations between a responsible cobalt discourse, resource nationalism and legitimacy gives a new insight into the impact of responsible sourcing initiatives, while also creating the possibility to propose alternative pathways that prioritize local dynamics.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the impact of liberation discourses on allocating rents, by outlining how discourses around transformation shape rent-seeking processes at Eskom, South Africa's national electricity company.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how discourses around transformation shape rent seeking processes, using Eskom – South Africa’s national electricity company – as a case study. The paper frames discourses around transformation (broadly referring to measures to tackle apartheid’s legacy of inequality) as forms of liberation discourse with nationalistic and developmental characteristics. Actors operationalise these discourses to justify the allocation of rents from Eskom, like coal supply contracts, using discourses around transformation to frame decisions or transactions as productive or ‘transformative’.

Eskom is at the centre of high-profile corruption allegations involving the allocation of contracts and is unable to provide reliable or affordable access to electricity. Several researchers have blamed the faction associated with former president, Jacob Zuma, for recent crises at Eskom. This paper expands on these claims, offering a framework that contextualises crises at Eskom beyond a particular faction’s actions. In addition, analysing discourses around transformation offers insights to emerging debates over ‘just’ energy transitions. These emerging debates reflect ongoing disagreement over how ‘transformation’ should be realised in post-apartheid South Africa and the wider challenges of pursuing ‘development’ in a global neoliberal context.

Through documentary analysis and key informant interviews the paper contributes to research into the political economy of South Africa’s energy sector. The conceptual framework also contributes to research into the allocation of resources from public institutions and these processes’ impact. The paper makes these contributions by outlining how the operationalisation of discourses around transformation have evolved at Eskom, and their impact on rent-seeking processes at the company.

Paper short abstract:

While Mozambican elites pay lip service to resource nationalism and developmentalism, the deals struck are poor and policies strikingly undeveloped. But there might be much instrumentality in and rents to reap from ‘poor deals’ and from uneven development itself.

Paper long abstract:

With its massive gas reserves, Mozambique is set to become one of Africa’s leading gas exporters within the coming decade. Based on data collected through recent fieldwork – with Total’s emerging LNG mega-project in Cabo Delgado and gas projects in Inhambane as cases – this paper explores the emerging political economy of Mozambique as petro-state. We employ the standard ‘resource curse’ script to explore how public agency, civil society organisations, and external actors convene in attempts to ensure fair deal vis-a-vis IOCs; build means of transparent and accountable revenue managament; and to prevent enclave development by way of prescribing local contents etc. However, such scripts are inadequate on their own – the emerging political economy must be seen against the backdrop of Mozambique’s particular political settlement. While elites pay lip service to ‘resource nationalism’ and ‘developmentalism’, the deals struck are frail and policies remain strikingly underdeveloped. But this might indeed be functional for elites – there is much instrumentality in and rents to reap from ‘poor deals’ and from uneven development itself.

Paper long abstract:

Extractivism is rising; more than half of economies depend on raw material exports. While the climate crisis and the Ukraine war push the Global North towards sustainability and energy transition, the Global South seems to be fated to reinforce its position of natural resources producer -of fuel and non-fuel materials. Emerging global political and economic dynamics contest African ‘old’ fuel exporting economies (Algeria or Nigeria) and ‘new’ mineral ones (Morocco, Tunisia, or DR Congo). To face these complex challenges, many call for the re-emergence of a developmental state capable of mobilising resources and institutions to promote growth and welfare. This article casts doubt on how this discussion is evolving, as the prescription ‘using extractivism to overcome extractivism’ is actually not so new. The post-neoliberal turn and the 2000s commodity super-cycle created a ‘development myth,’ particularly in Latin America, where the neoextractivist state flourished. We argue that more critical lenses towards this idea of the state as a driver of the development process are needed to understand under which socio-economic and geopolitical conditions can a developmentalist discourse evolve into fundamental structural transformation. Exploring the concept’s theoretical roots, we find that implementing successful policies depends on three factors: permissive international environment, efficiency and coherence of the developmental coalition, and legitimacy and endurance of the class alliance between the political settlement and the bargaining power of the poor. We apply our argument to the Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia cases to outline prospects concerning their possible strucutral transformation in the current global context.