Short Abstract

The panel explores how the global energy transition is reshaping resource governance across Africa. It connects community experiences of extraction with national development strategies and Africa’s changing relations with global actors, across both critical mineral and hydrocarbon economies

Long Abstract

Africa remains an important hub for the critical minerals needed to drive the global energy transition. These minerals are creating new opportunities for economic transformation but also intensifying struggles over extraction, value, and power. These dynamics unfold across scales and involve actors with often divergent interests. At the same time, many hydrocarbon-rich African countries are navigating continued dependence on fossil fuel revenues alongside a global shift away from hydrocarbons. Together, these developments raise important questions about how African states and other actors are negotiating the tensions between resource dependence, economic transformation, and changing global energy politics. How are these changes reshaping relations between communities, states, companies and transnational actors? Whose interests are being advanced or marginalised in the process? This panel invite contributions examining these questions across Africa’s critical mineral and hydrocarbon sectors, with particular interest in how the global energy transition is reshaping resource governance, development strategies and relations of power.

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