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.