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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I interrogate how state power in the Democratic Republic of Congo is increasingly being revitalised through foreign alliances with extra-territorial actors building a variety of forms of extractive infrastructures.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I interrogate how state power in the Democratic Republic of Congo is increasingly being revitalised through foreign alliances with extra-territorial actors building a variety of forms of extractive infrastructures. Since the liberalization of the mining economy in the Congo in 2002, sociotechnical projects in the form of state joint-ventures companies, public-private partnerships, labour formalization arrangements, and mineral supply chain programmes have all sought to re-order, expand and expedite the production or supply of minerals from the Congo. A global imperative to shift away from fossil fuels offers further impetus and appetite for Congo’s metal ores and it has brought with it vast amounts of foreign investment which appears to be revitalizing the authority of the state, largely at the expense of the Congolese people. Drawing on the works of anti-colonial thinkers such as Patrice Lumumba, Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, and Samir Amin, who anticipated the endurance of imperial control over Africa and called for pan-African strategies to protect African self-determination, I reflect on whether an extraverted Congolese state today remains a useful vehicle for channeling the needs, desires and aspirations of the Congolese people. I contend that doing so is not only necessary to centering empire in an analysis of political sovereignty in the 21st century, but it is also an attempt to move our imaginations beyond the realist confines of nation-states to consider other ‘concrete utopias’ (Wilder 2022) for building post-national solidarity.