Between M23 and electric vehicles
With regional and global powers keen to take advantage of the DRC’s mineral wealth, it is hard to see how things can get better for the country in the short and medium term.
Extraction
Imagining counter-futures
The film 'Neptune Frost' reduces the gulf between Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism by connecting their shared vision against violent systems of domination.
Hands off Africa
It is high time that the devastating impact of foreign intervention in Africa be taken as seriously as those in Europe.
The revenge of the subalterns
The second 'Black Panther' film is a fierce critique of the West's (neo)colonial adventures in Africa and the Americas.
The imperial forest
Gregg Mitman’s 'Empire of Rubber' is less a historical reading of Liberia than a history of America and racial capitalism through the lens of a US corporate giant.
The land and the sea
Communities whose land is being targeted for exploration by oil and gas companies are increasingly using the courts. South Africa points to good lessons for social movements about allying with the law.
We need to talk about wage theft
South African companies can afford to pay their workers a living wage—if not for their commitment to profit shifting, as the case of Lonmin and Marikana showed.
A bracing form of political cabaret
'Neptune Frost,' written and co-directed by Saul Williams, knows that extraction is everyone’s problem.
The Mexico option
Mexico is fighting to regain sovereignty over its energy future, and African Leftists would do well to look to it for some answers.
The promise of platinum
Platinum holds promise for a net-zero future. But the promise of platinum cannot be founded on the broken promises endured by those who live in its spaces of extraction.
Something for nothing
As coal is dying we must be prepared to absorb the transferable infrastructure of this industry and re-tool it for use in the emerging economy.
We’re actually being exploited once again
Mozambique should not move forward with extractivist mega-projects. They always contribute to serious violations of human rights, cause irreversible damage to the environment, and deepen the climate crisis.
The global and class inequalities of fossil fuel subsidy reform
Climate activists and leftists should tread cautiously when they use the climate argument to support fossil fuel subsidy reform in Africa.
The missing 27 billion
Governments need funds for stimulus packages and aid to address COVID-19. But corporate tax avoidance and tax breaks for aid in African countries is undermining emergency responses.
The price of contamination
Legal cases against foreign multinationals in the Central African Copperbelt seek justice for decades of pollution. But activists should also investigate the historical legacies of colonial mining companies.
Oil and Angola’s ‘crusade’ against corruption
Angolan political authorities are not particularly interested in justice or tackling corruption. It is more about settling scores.
Low worker wages and high inequality
How an industrial mine in the Congo reveals the inequity of wage distribution.
Unusable Nigerians
Oloibiri is a town located a few kilometers away from the city of Port Harcourt in