African Politics
Etablissement : ESPOL European School of Political and Social Sciences
Langue : Anglais
Formation(s) dans laquelle/lesquelles le cours apparait :
- Master’s in Digital Politics and Governance [ECTS : 4,00]
Période : S3
Course description
In the past fifteen years, the formidable stakes of Africa’s geological wealth have positioned the continent as the global economy’s ‘last frontier’. Cobalt, a core component of ion-lithium batteries and rare earths, a critical feature of wind turbines, are the green gold of the energy transition. These resources are also found in two countries best-known for the violence of their colonial and postcolonial trajectories, the Congo and Burundi.
Is the new Scramble for Africa ushering in a brighter, more just future – away from the geological scandals of the past?
This course revisits key debates on the uneven and unequal relationship between Africa and the world economy to track the structural variables (legal, political, economic, social) that have shaped this relationship over time, from the colonial era to the present. Meanwhile, it asks a core question for our times: how can we respond to the climate emergency without depleting common goods – foremost the economic, societal, and environmental welfare of African societies?
To do so, the course espouses an interconnected understanding of global value chains (GVCs) that deploys a multidisciplinary approach (combining politics, anthropology, legal scholarship along with critical political economy) and a multiscale perspective – looking at African sites, but also patterns of power expansion in the ‘Global North’ and financial capitals. It thereby critically assesses the specific role played by law as a vernacular of the relationship between Africa and the world economy, from the 19th century Scramble, through to the on-going rush for ‘green’ minerals.
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
- demonstrate an understanding of the centrality of the successive ‘Scrambles’ for Africa to the formation of the global political economy and global capitalism, from the late 19th century, the Cold war partition of the continent, through to the current era of capitalism
- assess and question imperial legacies and their revival in the ongoing rush for the critical minerals of the ‘green’ transition
- assess and question the role of law and legal intermediaries over time in consolidating, transforming and resisting the uneven and unequal relationship between the African South and the world economy
Additionally, students will have acquired and/or consolidated the following professionalizing skills:
- research and synthetize an issue characterized by a complex set of political, legal and economic variables
- adapt and disseminate scientific knowledge to a targeted stakeholders’ and policy audience
Course structure
Made up of 9 sessions of 3 hours each, the course is structured in two parts.
The first part (sessions 1 to 7) critically examines key notions that have been used to assess state trajectories in the Global North in the past forty years in their relation to the world economy (global value chains – GVCs; globalization; the neoliberal turn and financialization) and others that have specifically been applied to the ‘African’ state (gatekeeping politics; the ‘resource curse’ & extraction; ‘quasi-sovereignty’, intervention & rule of law reforms).
Its gist is that these concepts are embedded in two distinct historical obsessions – the neoliberal turn and financialization on the one hand and imperial legacies on the other. When studied in isolation, these conceptual lenses tend to obfuscate the nexus between state power, finance and law in the present phase of capitalism.
Rather, students are invited to assess mineral value chains originating from the African South from an interconnected perspective, by combining disciplinary lenses (politics, anthropology, legal scholarship and critical political economy) along with geographical scales.
The second part (sessions 8 and 9) adopts a historical perspective to deploy this approach, focusing successively on the 19th Century Scramble for Africa, the Cold War partition of the continent, through to the current phase of capitalism, characterized by US-Chinese imperial rivalries and the competition to control access to, and provision of the mineral resources needed for the ‘green’ transition.
In this second part, an interconnected perspective is deployed to contrast competing forms of imperialism (by the British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, US and Chinese powers), the roles played by a range of political, legal and economic intermediaries (ranging from local chiefs, multinational corporate law firms through to global traders) and the nexus between law, politics and finance in the specific trajectory of a range of African states (with a specific focus on former British colonies in West Africa, South Africa, countries of the so-called French pré carré, and Angola).
