New book on Land, rights and the politics of investments in Africa

In response to the rising demand for minerals for the global green transition investments in Africa’s natural resources are surging. Extractive projects that had stalled during the fall in global commodity prices are suddenly picking up. A new edited volume sheds new light on how the previous resource boom, which took off after the turn of the millennium, played out. Through a careful examination of large-scale investments in gas, minerals, and agriculture the book chapters explore evolving relations between investors, political elites and local populations in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda. It is based on the observation that many natural resource investments failed to get implemented or ended up in conflicts that undermined their potential to contribute to socio-economic development on the African continent.

Not surprisingly, the book suggests that investment projects produce winners and losers. By applying a relational approach to the study of investment processes and rights the authors however call for more attention to the complex dynamics between investors, elites, and local populations, where outcomes are not always given in advance. Many investment projects demonstrate a potential of producing benefits for the local populations that is not realised during implementation. This points to the importance of the quality of investment processes and the relationships between the involved actors. The chances of large-scale investment processes getting implemented while accommodating the rights of local populations are greatest when relations are characterised by some of degree of reciprocity among actors.

The book thus develops an analytical perspective that moves from a focus on rights as absolute to one that sees rights as the outcomes of the relationships between the three main groups of actors involved in investment processes. This constitutes a contribution to the bodies on natural resource investments pertaining to land grabbing, the resource curse, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which rarely move beyond researching one or two of these sets of relations. The book is the outcome of the research project Hierarchies of Rights that was coordinated by Professor Lars Buur at Roskilde University and carried out with partners in Denmark, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda. The project was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and administered by Danida Fellowship Centre