In response to the recent surge in extractive natural resource investments in Africa, this insightful book explores how relations between investors, ruling elites, and local populations develop when large-scale investments in gas, minerals, and agriculture expand. Advancing a multi-level approach that encompasses rigorous theoretical analysis, fieldwork, and literature review, expert contributors examine the implementation of natural resource investments and the extent to which they respect procedural rights of local populations. Chapters draw together understudied bodies of literature on land-grabbing debates, the resource curse controversy and corporate social responsibility (CSR), demonstrating how the chances of large-scale investments in natural resources are at their greatest when characterised by 'reciprocal exchange deals' between investors and local populations, 'compatible interests' between ruling elites and investors, and 'mutual recognition' between local populations and ruling elites. Through a careful examination of case studies in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, the book ultimately highlights the complexity of the political economy of natural resource investments. Providing valuable theoretical and empirical insights, this book will be an invigorating read for scholars and students of political economy, political geography, sustainability, CSR, and business studies. Its valuable insights on how natural resource investments might accelerate economic growth and consolidate links between local and global economies will also be of interest to development practitioners and investors.

This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth African country studies that illustrate the challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies.

This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth African country studies that illustrate the challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies.

An unprecedented overview of anthropological and political science research on vigilantism in Africa which makes an important and innovative contribution to current discussions on the relationship between violent self-justice andstate and non-state agencies. Self-justice and legal self-help groups have been gaining importance throughout Africa. The question of who is entitled to formulate 'legal principles', enact 'justice', police 'morality' and sanction 'wrongdoings' has increasingly become a subject of controversy and conflict. These conflicts focus on the strained relationship between state sovereignty and citizens' self-determination. More particularly, they concern the conditions, modes and means of thelegitimate execution of power, and in this volume are seen as a diagnostics as to how social actors in Africa debate and practise socio-political order. State agencies try to bring vigilante groups under control by channelling their activities, repressing them, or using them for their own interests. Vigilante groups usually must struggle for recognition and acceptance in local socio-political spheres. As several of the contributions in the volume show, legal self-help groups in Africa therefore 'domesticate' themselves by, among other things, seeking legitimation, engaging in publicly acceptable non-vigilante activities, or institutionalizing what often began as a rather unrestrained and 'disorderly' social movement. Thomas G. Kirsch is Professor & Chair of Social & Cultural Anthropology at the University of Constance, Germany; Tilo Gratz is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany & Associate Lecturer at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

How should the Mozambican traditional leaders' double role as community representatives and state assistants be captured? This discussion paper addresses some fundamental questions pertaining to the 2002 official recognition of traditional leaders as community authorities. After a brief history of the changing role of, and faith in, traditional authorities as a basis for understanding the importance of their recent official recognition, the paper outlines the key objectives of the Decree 15/2000 that officially recognizes community authorities. Some of the key concepts underpinning the Decree are then critically assessed. It is argued that the double role that community authorities are expected to fulfill as both community-representatives and state-assistants is not equally balanced in the Decree: the scale tips heavily towards the state-assistance aspect. The reasons for this are explored in the context of a set of reified notions underpinning the Decree, such as its understanding of "traditional rules" and the concept of "community." The paper concludes by pointing out some unintended consequences of these reified notions for kin-based forms of community authority and especially for the ideal of community participation.