Extractivism in Africa: The Role of the “BRICS” Countries

Patrick Bond

Co-sponsors: Haymarket Books and System Change Not Climate Change

As economies North and South engage in the “race for what’s left” around key natural resources, extractivism – plundering solely for profit – is playing an increasingly central role in their capitalist development and accumulation patterns. Extractivism and now neo-extractivism (which refers to an expanded role for the national state) are hotly debated throughout the left globally.

For some it is seen as the only option for growth, and thus it must be socialized and mobilized as a lever of social and economic development. For others, it only enhances dependence on capitalist world markets controlled by monopolistic corporations, a problem further exacerbated by its ecological contradictions and reliance on practices of dispossession. This talk will focus on the “new scramble for Africa” and controversies surrounding the role of rising powers such as China, Russia, and South Africa.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban and is a political economist at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is author of Elite Transition (Pluto Press 2014) and Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press 2012) and co-editor of BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique (Haymarket 2015).