Introduction

Africa has long been held up as a region which has been by-passed by globalization. However, Africa is changing rapidly, as are its relations with the rest of the world. There is now massively increased interest and investment in, and trade with, the continent by many major world powers. The role of Asian powers in particular has grown rapidly. In some parts of Africa, children now assume that foreigners with light skin are Chinese, rather than European or American.

When and why did Africa suddenly become strategically important for ‘great’ and emerging powers? Why are Chinese companies now investing heavily on the continent and why does the United States now have more than a dozen military bases and camps on the continent, and are these issues related? The argument of this book is that they are; that these are features of the deepening process of globalization which unleashed a new scramble for African resources and, to a lesser extent, markets and territorial control. This is reconfiguring Africa's economic geography and development, but also reinforcing previous patterns of economy and politics. This book explores the reasons behind the new scramble and its nature and impacts.

African development is defined by the ‘paradox of plenty’: that is, that it is a very resource-rich continent, but economically poor. Africa is thought to contain 42% of the world's bauxite, 38% of its uranium, 42% of its gold, 73% of its platinum, 88% of its diamonds and around 10% of its oil. Nonetheless, over 40% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) live on the equivalent of less than what US$1.90 a day would buy you in the United States (World Bank 2015) – not even enough to buy a cup of coffee in many places there. Despite the fact that Guinea in West Africa contains almost half of the world's bauxite, the raw material for aluminium, its government's budget is only 0.0005 per cent of that of its former colonial master, France. This is an outcome of the way in which Africa has been integrated into the global economy, which is heavily influenced by its colonial history.

The first scramble for Africa amongst the major European powers was set off in the late nineteenth century by a variety of factors, including English, German and French military rivalry, the need to open new sources of cotton supply as a result of the American civil war, and the search for new markets as a result of the European economic depression. During that era King Leopold II of the Belgians objectified Africa as a ‘magnificent cake’ which would yield up resources and wealth for Europe.

The rules for the division of Africa amongst the colonial powers were established at the Berlin Conference, hosted by united Germany's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1884–5. Having recently fought the Franco-Prussian war, in part to create a united Germany, Bismarck was keen that inter-imperialist rivalry in Africa should not lead to further conflict, as Germany was now ‘satiated’ in Europe. It was ironic that, having united Germany, Bismarck was responsible for the division of Africa (Adebajo 2010). The fact Africa was divided in this way is evidenced by the many straight lines forming around a third of African borders, based on geographical lines of latitude and longitude.

The Conference established the rules for the colonial division of Africa based on the principle of ‘effective occupation’. Effective occupation was where a European power could claim territory in Africa as its own if it could show that it was in effective control of it: that it had troops and administrators on the ground to rule it. This prevented war, although Britain and France had a military stand-off over Fashoda, in modern-day South Sudan, in 1898, which was eventually resolved to Britain's advantage.

While colonial rule was short-lived in Africa – generally less than 100 years – it had profound impacts. Economies were structured to meet the demands of industrializing Europe by producing raw materials. Consequently, European prosperity was partly built on the colonization of the continent. This extraversion of Africa, whereby its economy was oriented to meet the needs of other people in other places, continues till today. The calculus was simple, as illustrated by a children's game.

In the National Famine Memorial in Strokestown House in County Roscommon in Ireland, there is an old board game in one of the children's bedrooms called ‘The Colonial Game’. The objective of the game is to import raw materials cheaply and sell expensive manufactured goods back to the colonies. Between 1905 and 1914, 50 per cent of Dahomey's gross domestic product (GDP) was extracted by the French (Manning 1982, cited in Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2001). Unequal trade installed under colonialism is the basis of African poverty today, many would argue, although there are also domestic elites who benefit as the continent is estimated to have over 160,000 US dollar millionaires (BBC 2015) and South Africa has, by some estimates, 20 US dollar billionaires, many of whom are shareholders in major resource companies. Some argue that South Africa was an example of ‘internal colonialism’.

Resources were central to the first scramble for Africa. For example, the Berlin Conference granted the Belgian king rights to the Congo, which was held as his personal property and became a major source of rubber for European and American car tyres, and also condoms. Indeed, some attribute the demographic transition in Europe, in which birth rates fell, to Congolese rubber.

An estimated 10 million people were killed in the Congo during Belgian colonialism in the search for ivory and rubber. Refusal to search for and tap rubber under Belgian rule could lead to the loss of a hand or death. This ‘plunder economy’ continues today, with an estimated 3–5 million people killed in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1998 and 2003. As discussed later, conflict this time around was largely about control of the strategic mineral coltan used in new ‘heartland’ technologies of the information age, such as mobile phones.

The structure of African economies remained largely unchanged in the post-colonial era. Ghana was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa, as defined by the United Nations, to achieve independence, in 1957. Its first Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah, wrote, before he was removed from power by a coup, of the dangers of neo-colonialism. Neo-colonialism is where formal political independence is achieved, but economic control – and hence indirect political power – continues to lie with overseas powers and companies. Tanzania's first independent leader, Julius Nyerere, spoke of ‘flag independence’ – again, a situation in which real economic control continued to rest with the former colonial powers.

After independence, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Western powers supported ‘friendly’ anti-communist dictators such as Mobutu Seso Seko in Zaire, who came to power in a coup backed by Belgium and the American Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1970s, Mobutu's Zaire received half of all American aid to Africa.

During this time, the West did not impose conditions such as democracy or free market reforms on states receiving aid in Africa. However, with the winding down of the Cold War in the 1980s, this changed, and economic and political conditions from Western-dominated financial institutions and donors became the norm. In order to access emergency funds from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cope with the effects of the global oil shocks of the 1970s and subsequent debt crises for which they were partially responsible, many African countries had already begun to implement free market reforms in the 1980s. These economic reforms were to have an unintended effect, however – that of opening up Africa to trade and investment from rising powers in the East and South – but they failed to reverse underdevelopment.

There is an extensive literature on the causes of African underdevelopment. This falls into two broad categories: that which blames African elites for their corruption and poor governance (Van De Walle 2001), and that which blames the combined and uneven nature of economic development in the global capitalist system (Bond 2006). However, a third position has recently emerged and received much media attention. This proposes that aid is the primary cause of African underdevelopment (Moyo 2009). It is meant to corrupt political elites, create a dependency culture and distort trade, amongst other defects. The problems with aid are well known (Glennie 2008) and this has led to a variety of responses.

Some corporations, such as the Body Shop, champion ‘trade not aid’, and the EU now gives ‘aid for trade’. However, African trade is booming. Africa's merchandise trade rose from US$217 billion in 1995 to US$1.2 trillion in 2013, but the absolute numbers of people living in poverty in Africa continued to rise (UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) 2010; WTO (World Trade Organization) 2014). This is largely because approximately three-quarters of what Africa exports are unprocessed primary commodities such as oil or copper. This is highly problematic because primary commodities tend to be characterized by very volatile prices and lack of technological dynamism and of local economic linkages, and are often subject to revenue looting by political elites. Additionally, many of the biggest companies that exploit African resources are foreign-owned, so the profits flow elsewhere. Is trade, or the current structure of African trade installed under colonialism, one of the primary problems then: producing, rather than reducing, poverty?

In the new scramble, there is geo-economic competition between different world economic powers to open up resource access for ‘their’ companies, in addition to subsidiary motives such as getting access to African markets and seeking diplomatic support in the United Nations. While in the past Europe and North America have dominated trade with Africa, this is now changing. China is now the world's second-largest economy (or the first when measured based on what the Chinese currency can buy in China) and is still growing rapidly – if at a slower rate than previously – and is now Africa's largest individual trading partner.

In China's case, given its ‘late start’ in accessing African resources, this often involves inducements such as concessional loans, the construction of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), or proxy force, such as the building of arms and tank assembly plants in Sudan and the supply of weapons to Zimbabwe. Which strategy is adopted depends on the nature of existing domestic social relations. Consequently, emerging forms of South–South globalization and investment are sometimes more progressive, and in other cases more regressive, than earlier Northern-centred relations with Africa, although with increasingly clear commonalities. Therefore, understanding the differential nature and geography of engagement is key.

In the Chinese case, the emerging form of rule at a distance is a form of ‘flexigemony’ – discussed later, in which the Chinese state works with and through both authoritarian and democratic states in Africa to ensure resource and market access and diplomatic support, in addition to other objectives. The ‘full spectrum approach’ – seeking resources, markets and diplomatic support – is also adopted by India, as we will see below.

While there are many resources that could have been chosen for study for this book, of necessity only a few can be examined in more detail. There are different theories about the etiology of the word ‘Africa’. One is that it derives from a Greek word meaning ‘without cold’, or from a Latin word meaning ‘sunny’ or ‘hot’. There are now elaborate plans to develop solar farms in the Sahara, one of which could supply up to 15 per cent of Europe's power requirements. Competition around energy resources has in recent years been acute, given their centrality to the functioning of the global economy. However, as solar mega farms have yet to come to fruition, the focus of this book is on other forms of energy.

As a source of wealth, conflict and poverty, oil congeals the contradictions of globalization. While Africa has had major oil producers for more than half a century, competition around this resource increased dramatically with the growth of China and the Iraq war. It is examined here, as are uranium and biofuels which became of greater importance as the oil prices rose.

Africa has long produced uranium – for the atom bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, for example. Biofuels, however, are a new energy resource, with a different geography. While oil is a ‘point resource’ found at set locations, often coastal or offshore, uranium is found onshore (see resource map on p. xiv), and biofuel crops are diffuse resources – and consequently difficult to map – which can sometimes be grown on marginal land. This geography informs patterns of conflict and class formation.

Conflicts around oil and diamonds in Africa are well known and reported in the popular media. However, there are other resource grabs and conflicts which are less well known, but have important implications for African lives and livelihoods. One of these resource grabs involves coltan, a semi-precious metal without which the global informational economy would not function. The extraction of coltan has been associated with war, poverty and environmental despoliation in the DRC.

Timber is a basic input into the global construction and furniture industries, and so it too is vitally important to the global economy. Much of the demand for African timber is now coming from China, so that it can be processed and exported as furniture to Europe and the US. Africa is home to major timber reserves, although these are being rapidly depleted. Trees also serve an important carbon sink function vital to global environmental sustainability, particularly in the context of accelerated climate change. Consequently, this is also an important resource to examine.

Food, along with water, is the most basic human need. As the global population grows and consumption patterns change, there will also be growing competition around access to food. There is also growing competition for land to grow food and biofuels on, and as an investment and source of political control, as described later. Land is often a vital resource and means of subsistence for many communities in Africa, but in much of the continent there is increasing competition – both with international investors and local elites – to control it.

Given Africa's extensive coastline, fish are a vital source of calories and protein for much of its population, but foreign firms and populations also covet this increasingly scarce resource. Unlike many other resources, fish have a mobile geography, and this is mirrored by the mobility of the extraction equipment which trails them: trawlers and factory ships. Access to fish is also contested and was implicated in the rise of Somali piracy, as will be discussed later. The phenomenon of biopiracy or genetic theft of African plants is also discussed.

While the contradiction between the growth of the global economy and the fixed amount of natural resources is fundamentally what has sparked the new scramble for Africa, another contradiction of the globalized market economy also motivates it. The global economy is technologically dynamic and expansive; however, multinational corporations (MNCs) seek out low-cost labour sites for assembly operations to reduce costs and raise profits. Given the low wages paid to Chinese workers, for example, they can often not afford to buy the products, such as iPods, which they produce. Low wages and the high intensity of work were implicated in a rash of suicides at the company that makes iPods in China in 2010.

This mismatch means that surplus profits or capital have to find other outlets, such as asset price inflation in stock markets or housing. Another avenue that global business has been exploring to open up new sources of profit in recent years has been the so-called ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ – the roughly half of the world's population living on less than the equivalent of a few dollars a day. While Western companies such as Unilever now produce washing powder in small packets to cater to this market, Indian, Chinese and other companies already manufacture products specifically aimed at this market in their own countries. Africa then represents a sizeable market, with a population approaching a billion people, demanding affordable goods.

Given saturated markets elsewhere, some major Western technology companies also want their systems to become the operating standards so they can capture African markets in the future. In Namibia, Microsoft provided free copies of Windows and computers to go with them, reportedly in part to undercut a non-governmental organization (NGO) which was providing open-source software for free. This book also examines competition over African markets.

While Africa is being reintegrated into the global economy primarily as a supplier of raw materials, it is too simplistic to present this as simply a rerun of the colonial scramble, for a number of reasons. First, the original scramble was sometimes conducted by what we would now call MNCs, or what were then called concessionary companies, such as the British South Africa Company founded by the English imperialist Cecil Rhodes. They were called concessionary companies because they were granted concessions by their home governments to manage certain overseas territories exclusively.

These concessionary companies were closely linked to home-country governments and granted monopoly territorial and exploitation rights. While some companies in the current scramble maintain close ties with their home governments, or in other cases are government-owned, there is no longer exclusive territorial access, except at much smaller scales, such as special economic production zones. Rather, a mixture of companies from different places now invest in the same countries. Additionally, ‘partnership capitalism’ often characterizes the new arrangements, as MNCs frequently engage in joint ventures, calling into question the extent to which ‘British’ and ‘Chinese’ oil capital, for example, are really distinct social forces.

The second major difference between the first and second scrambles is that African countries are now legally, if not economically, independent, making resource access for MNCs dependent on striking bargains with local elites who serve as gatekeepers. In relation to oil, the Nigerian human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa described this as ‘the slick alliance’ of domestic elites and MNCs. Another way to think of this is as a kind of transnational contract of extraversion, whereby territorial access to resources is granted to MNCs in exchange for a share of resource rents going to local elites.

In common with colonialism, the current round of economic restructuring in Africa is, however, reinscribing resource-based economies, and increasing class inequality, while perhaps simultaneously reducing absolute poverty – as a proportion of the population, if not in absolute numbers of the poor – at least it appeared to be up until the commodity price crash of 2014/15, although the data are too poor to make definitive statements on this (Jerven 2015). Chinese investment in road and rail infrastructure and the revival of the primary sector of the economy (agriculture and mining) present opportunities for growing employment and poverty reduction. However, by reinforcing resource-dependence and reinscribing enclave economies with limited connections to the rest of the national territory, this also risks reinforcing the power of authoritarian states. As resource-based capital accumulation tends to be more conflictual than that in other sectors of the economy, and class inequality increases, new conflicts are emerging on the continent, such as anti-Chinese riots, for example. The exclusion of peripheral regions from the benefits of resource revenues has also been implicated in the rise of some Islamic fundamentalist movements, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria. In common with some other parts of the world, there is also an Islamic fundamentalist scramble for territory in parts of the continent, which is interwoven with processes of militarization by foreign powers.

Increased interest in accessing African resources was one of the factors that drove the increasing militarization of the continent as great powers sought to insure their investments and disrupt potential terrorist threats. The militarization of Africa is proceeding through initiatives such as the United States African Command (AFRICOM) and the new American military base in Djibouti established in 2003. US military spending in Africa doubled from US$296 million in 1998–2001 to US$597 million in 2002–5, and the American military presence has grown rapidly in the intervening years. This, when combined with a number of recent French- and British-led interventions in Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic, has sometimes further inflamed conflict (and resistance), generating greater urgency around the African Union developing its military ‘standby’ force. There is also evidence that the great powers are cooperating, through the US–China–Africa trilateral dialogue or trilateral development cooperation projects, which involve a more successful emerging economy, a developed country and a low-income one. While the major powers have competing interests over access to specific resources in particular places, they share a common general interest in the continued exportation of African resources and unfettered access to African markets, generating incentives for this cooperation.

This book examines old and new economic power interest in the current development and exploitation of Africa's resources. It begins in chapter 1 by reviewing the historical reasons behind the development of resource-based, extractive economies, through a focus on current debates about Africa's geography and development. It then moves on to analyse the current increased interest of old and new economic powers in the continent. The geo-economics and political strategies of these powers are assessed, as are the impacts of resource exploitation, through case studies.

Chapter 2 examines old economic power interests and strategies in Africa in recent years. These powers have somewhat different interests, depending on their individual histories and economies. The US, in particular, has dramatically increased its presence in Africa, partly in response to Chinese resource competition, but also as part of the new remit of the American armed forces to engage in ‘stability’ missions (Morrissey 2016). While, in the early years of the new millennium, the US relationship with Africa was arguably ‘all about oil’, this has changed dramatically in recent years as the US imported no oil from Nigeria, still Africa's biggest producer, in October 2014, on foot of America's ‘shale oil and gas revolution’ (Taylor 2015). This chapter describes the evolution of the US geopolitical and economic strategy in Africa and discusses relations with selected key states.

The European Union (EU) powers and Japan have been playing defensive maintenance and ‘catch-up’ games with China and the US in Africa in recent years. Chapter 2 also examines the resource interests and strategies of the EU powers in Africa, with a particular focus on Britain and France, the two main former colonial powers. The EU powers have long-standing resource interests in Africa, and some argue that the recent aid-related ‘humanitarian scramble for Africa’ is infused with geopolitical and economic motives. For example, the deployment of an EU military ‘battlegroup’ to Chad, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, was partly to prevent the government of Chad from being overthrown by pro-Sudanese interests. Sudan is one of China's most important partner countries in Africa, as will be discussed.

The EU's main recent initiative in Africa is ‘free trade’ Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). While, among the continents of the world, Africa has the smallest economy, in the hypercompetitive environment generated by globalization, there is still competition over access to its relatively fast-growing markets, and EPAs can be understood in this light. Despite China's dramatically increased presence in Africa, the continent's trade with Europe is still roughly twice the size of that with China, and consequently of great importance to African states.

South Africa is both an old and a new economic power. It is old in the sense that it had, for a long time, the biggest economy in Africa, until Nigeria recalculated the size of its economy in 2014; and new in that it is only in the last twenty or so years that many of the restrictions on trade with the rest of the continent were lifted. This chapter also examines the nature and impacts of the re-emergence of South Africa.

China's interests in and exports to Africa are continuing to grow, if more slowly than their previous exponential rates. Chapter 3 examines Chinese resource interests and strategies in Africa. From less than US$5 billion in trade between Africa and China in the mid-1990s, the figure for 2014 was over US$200 billion, although Africa’s exports to China fell 40 per cent in 2015. Imports and exports between China and Africa are roughly balanced, but China's trade with Africa in 2008 was only 8 per cent of its trade with Asia, and consequently it is trade in strategic resources, such as oil, which is most important from a Chinese economic perspective (calculated from National Bureau of Statistics of China 2010). Through comparative case studies of Sudan and Zambia, this chapter, co-authored with Professor Ian Taylor, explores the impacts of Chinese interests on governance in these countries.

A variety of other new economic powers are also dramatically increasing their presences on the continent – particularly Brazil, Russia and India (along with China, these are commonly known as the ‘BRICs’). Chapter 4 explores the reasons behind this rapid growth in trade and investment, and the logic behind, and impacts of, other new economic power engagements, with a particular focus on India.

The subsequent chapters undertake case studies of particular sectors and commodities, and one of them reports on primary research on Asian-owned companies in the Southern African country of Zambia. Zambia is important as the third-largest recipient of Chinese investment in Africa, by some estimates, and the site of China's first operational SEZ on the continent.

Chapter 5 examines external economic interest in West African and Sahelian oil. Oil is the primary fuel for the global economy and economic growth, and supply problems in the Middle East, as a result of the war in Iraq, have made West African oil a resource of particular interest to the major powers. Africa contains about 7 per cent of known global oil reserves, and West African oil tends to be ‘light and sweet’ with a low sulphur content, suitable for burning in cars. West African and Chadian oil also does not have to pass through the ‘choke point’ – where it could potentially be disrupted – of the Suez Canal and, because of its greater proximity, shipping time to the East Coast of the US and Western Europe is reduced.

China is also a growing presence in oil production, and Angola is now, in some years, China's largest single supplier of oil. This chapter explores the nature of oil competition between the great powers in West Africa and the impacts on people's livelihoods and governance. While much has been written about Nigerian oil, and also Sudan, less is known about newer oil producers such as Angola and Equatorial Guinea, which have had the fastest-growing economies in the world in recent years, and consequently the discussion focuses on them.

Competition over land is an important part of the new scramble for Africa. However, it is not just international companies that are involved in this, but also local political elites and governments. Land is not just an economic resource, but a political one too, as so much of Africa's population depends directly on it for their livelihood. These issues are explored in chapter 6 through a case study of Uganda, co-authored with Professor David Taylor.

As a result of the small size of its economy, Africa is often presented as being largely irrelevant to the broader global economy. However, its minerals are of enormous economic and strategic importance, making it centrally vital. Chapter 7 examines competition and conflict over the key strategic minerals of uranium and coltan. Much of the literature on resource competition in Africa to date has focused on oil; however, its increasing scarcity, and also global climate change, has prompted governments around the world to turn to nuclear energy as an alternative.

Uranium is the key raw material in nuclear energy production and Africa holds 18 per cent of the world's known recoverable uranium resources. There is already substantial competition around access to this resource on the continent, with Russia an important emerging player. Active prospecting is being undertaken in dozens of countries, and uranium mining has been associated with pollution and violent conflict in Niger over the distribution of rents. This chapter reviews this industry in Africa, with a focus on the Sahel, the region bordering the Sahara, in particular.

Coltan is an abbreviation for colombite-tantalite from which the precious metals colombium and tantalum are extracted. Tantalum is twice as dense as steel and can capture and release an electrical charge, which makes it vital for capacitors in portable miniaturized electronic equipment such as mobile phones. Of known global tantalite reserves, 8 per cent are found in the DRC. Before the new major power scramble for Africa, there was a regional scramble for coltan, which helped to fuel the civil war in the DRC from 1998 to 2003 and involved eight African militaries at its height. Chapter 7 also explores this.

While most of the literature has focused on external power interest in Africa's non-renewable mineral resources, there is also increasing competition over living renewable resources. Chapter 8 explores this. The current deforestation process in Mozambique is locally referred to as the ‘Chinese takeaway’. Old-growth timber is in high demand around the world and is a principal raw material in the furniture industry. The value of Tanzania's timber exports increased by 1,400 per cent from 1997 to 2005, and sometimes a single tree may be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Harvesting has also sometimes been associated with conflict, to which large corporate conglomerates may contribute through their purchases. An estimated 70 per cent of Gabon's timber is exported illegally to China, and the figure rises to 90 per cent in the case of Equatorial Guinea. There have also been reactions against this, however, such as the government of Gabon's suspension of logging in nature reserves in 2002, although enforcement has been lax. This chapter explores the scramble for Africa's timber and its environmental impacts.

China's consumption of fish may treble by 2025. A reported 90 per cent of abalone shellfish have now been fished out in Southern Africa in recent years, and a Chinese ship is reported to have docked in Mozambique with 4 tons of shark fins, leading to accusations of resource colonialism. Since the collapse of the Somali state in the early 1990s, its waters have also been plundered by foreign business interests. Indeed, the current wave of piracy in Somalia began with boardings of overseas fishing vessels to discourage them from entering the country's territorial waters illegally. The world's largest trawler, formerly known as Atlantic Dawn, has also been operating off the West African coast. This chapter explores the ‘fish rush’ around Africa's coast as well.

Given increasing global energy usage, another area of world economic power interest in Africa is in the production of crops for biofuels. For example, in 2007, the then Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, undertook a tour of Africa during which he particularly promoted these. Prior to that, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had signed an agreement with the Brazilian state-owned energy company, Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), to import ethanol and develop the fuel's production in Nigeria. Biofuels are highly controversial in Africa because they may take land away from food-crop production, and in some cases are actually produced with staple food crops such as cassava. Asian and other companies are also now buying land for food production in Africa.

China is currently the world's largest consumer of copper and has shown particular interest in this metal, given its strategic importance to its economy. Zambia is a major copper producer and consequently is a key state for China in its resource strategy in Africa. While the focus of previous chapters is on resources, chapter 9, co-authored with Dr Godfrey Hampwaye, focuses on markets and examines the nature and impacts of Chinese and Indian investment, in Zambia in particular.

Chapter 10 explores the prospects for African development in the context of the new scramble. The last scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century was provoked by a particular conjuncture of events. The new scramble for Africa has both similarities with, and differences from, the previous scramble. Formal colonialism is gone and Africa no longer serves as a major market, at least not for the older industrial powers. However, it is arguably now one of the most important arenas in which global power politics is played out. Just as the original scramble for Africa did not result in open conflict between the great powers, this is likely to be the case today, as their economies are increasingly interwoven as a result of processes of globalization. However, some have argued there are a number of proxy conflicts on the continent – between Sudan and South Sudan, for example, although it is perhaps more complex than this, as will be explored later.

This final chapter assesses the likely impacts of the new scramble on African economic development, resource conflicts, and whether or not there are more cooperative institutional arrangements which could result in ‘win-win’ games for the continent and the great powers. Unfavourable raw material contracts have recently been renegotiated by a number of African governments. Greater coordination amongst these governments to ensure the best returns from their resources, and their ability to ‘sow’ these rents for industrial transformation, will be key to the continent's renaissance. Consequently, the nature of the African state remains central to the continent's (under)development.

ABC	Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomize
ACOTA	African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Programme
ACP	African, Caribbean and Pacific (countries)
AFRICOM	Africa Command of the United States Department of Defense
AGOA	African Growth and Opportunity Act
AIDS	Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
ANC	African National Congress (South Africa)
AU	African Union
BAe	British Aerospace Engineering
BBC	British Broadcasting Corporation
BEE	Black Economic Empowerment
BP	(formerly) British Petroleum
BRIC	Brazil, Russia, India, China
BRICS	Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
CAR	Central African Republic
CCS	Centre for Chinese Studies
CCTV	China Central Television
CFA	Communauté Financière Africaine
CIF	China International Fund
CNN	Cable News Network
CNPC	China National Petroleum Company
coltan	colombite-tantalite
COP 13	13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties
CVRD	Companhia Vale do Rio Doce
DFID	Department for International Development (United Kingdom)
DRC	Democratic Republic of Congo
EASSY	East African Submarine Cable
ECOWAS	Economic Community of West African States
EEZ	Exclusive Economic Zone
EPZ	Export Processing Zone
E-IMET	Enhanced International Military and Education and Training Programme
EPA	Economic Partnership Agreement
EU	European Union
EXIM	Export–Import
FDI	Foreign Direct Investment
FOCAC	Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
FPSOs	floating production, storage and offloading vessels
G7	Group of seven (major industrial countries)
GDP	Gross domestic product
GEDA	Gauteng Economic Development Agency
GPN	global production network
HIV	Human Immunodeficiency Virus
IBSA	India, Brazil, South Africa
ICC	International Criminal Court
IMF	International Monetary Fund
ITEC	Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation
KCM	Koncola Copper Mine
LRA	Lord's Resistance Army
MFEZ	Multi-facility Economic Zone
MNC	Multinational corporation
MTN	Mobile Telecommunications Networks
NEPAD	New Partnership for African Development
NFA	National Forest Authority (of Uganda)
NGOs	Non-governmental organizations
NOCs	National Oil Companies
NRM	National Resistance Movement
OECD	Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
ONGC	Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (India)
OPEC	Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PDVSA	Petróleos de Venezuela, SA
PEPFAR	President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
Petrobras	Petróleo Brasileiro SA
PETRONAS	Petroliam Nasional Berhad
PF	Patriotic Front
PRSP	Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
RCD	Rally for Congolese Democracy
REDD+	United Nations’ Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation programme
RoZ	Republic of Zambia
RPF	Rwandan Patriotic Front
SADC	Southern African Development Community
SAP	Structural Adjustment Programme
SAT-3/WASC	South Atlantic 3 / West Africa Submarine Fibre Optic Cable
SEZ	Special Economic Zone
SOEs	state-owned enterprises
SSA	Sub-Saharan Africa
SWAPO	South West African People's Organization
TEAM-9	Techno-Economic Approach to Africa–India Movement
TNCs	Transnational corporations
UN	United Nations
UNCTAD	United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP	United Nations Development Programme
USAID	United States Agency for International Development
UWA	Uganda Wildlife Authority
VVIP	Very, Very Important Person
WTO	World Trade Organization
ZDA	Zambia Development Agency
ZMM-GT	Zambia–Malawi–Mozambique Growth Triangle

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction