Mining and extractive urbanism: Postdevelopment in a Mozambican boomtown

Abstract

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractMozambique has attracted international attention in recent years following the discovery of huge reserves of coal and gas deposits. A major focus of Mozambique's extractives boom is the province of Tete, once a remote outpost but now a hub of power generation for the southern African region and an emerging centre of global investment in coal extraction. Some of the world's largest mining firms from both established and emerging economies have descended on Tete, investing billions of dollars in developing concessions to extract some of the world's largest untapped coal reserves with wide-ranging implications for the region's political economy and effecting significant shifts in relations between state, capital and territorial control. At the urban scale, Tete city and its expanding periphery are increasingly characterized by enclaves and spaces of enclosure, as some groups benefit from and are integrated into global circuits of production while others suffer displacement and dispossession. In seeking to trace the emergence of Tete's resource economy, the paper contends that three distinctive spatialities have resulted from these developments, including the infrastructure networks being constructed around the extractive industries, the enclave spaces arising from the coal boom (and the particular labour geographies that shape them) and the new and distinctive urban geographies that are the product of Tete's rapid urbanisation. The paper seeks to assess the impacts, stakes and challenges linked to investments in extractive activities and looks at how the costs and risks are being differentially distributed within and between the affected communities.

The political economy of energy transitions in Mozambique and South Africa: The role of the Rising Powers

“…Mozambique rising power interest in the energy sector has predominantly concentrated on securing access to fossil fuel resources through resource diplomacy following the recent discovery of significant coal and gas reserves (Kirshner and Power, 2015). In 2013 the Indian High Commission to Mozambique predicted 'an inevitable competition for markets and…”

“…The development of the national electricity infrastructure and rural electrification efforts have often lacked transparency or been mired in allegations of corruption as projects have regularly been awarded to companies with links to the main political and economic elites (Nhamire and Mosca 2014). Mozambique also has its own emergent MEC that builds on a long history of an economy based on an extractive system of capital accumulation and is currently pursuing a vision of development that is heavily centred on extractive industries (especially coal and gas) and energy-intensive mega-projects (Kirshner and Power, 2015).…”

What Holds Back Dam Building? The Role of Brazil in the Stagnation of Dams in Tanzania

“…Petrobras, for instance, brokered a number of oil deals in the Gulf of Guinea and in East Africa-including Tanzania (Carmody, 2011(Carmody, , 2013. Vale, Brazil's mining conglomerate, built on existing political ties in Mozambique to become the major player in the large Tete mining project (Kirshner & Power, 2015) but also engaged in Liberia (Taylor, 2014). Meanwhile the commodity boom also supported infrastructure building, given the direct demand for infrastructure-enabling commodity extraction, and given the way the commodity boom increased government finance for various projects.…”

“…This point is especially pertinent in Angola, where Odebrecht's relations with President Dos Santos's regime were so well aligned (Soares de Oliveira, 2015) that one interviewed diplomat commented that "Marcelo [the company's currently-jailed former chief] is more important than the ambassador". 19 To a lesser extent, Vale enjoys the same close political ties in Mozambique, having established mining operations since the 1990s (Kirshner & Power, 2015). But it is also important to look beyond Brazil in understanding Brazil-Africa ties.…”

‘No Smoke without Fire’: Citizenship and Securing Economic Enclaves in Mozambique

“…Scholars such as Appel () and Ferguson () have demonstrated how enclaving creates forms of graduated sovereignty, while Kapferer and Bertelsen (: 18) argue that the state is being reconfigured along corporate lines, ‘where the impersonal, equalizing social contract of Rousseau has been replaced by managerial, person‐centred, even autocratic and hierarchical orders’. For Mozambique, Kirshner and Power (: 70) argue that mining enclaves in Tete province are reshaping both economic life and urban planning, recreating deeply exclusionary colonial models of company rule on the one hand, while drawing local elites more tightly into international networks on the other.…”