Feminist Africa 2020 – Volume 2, Issue 1: Resistance to Extractivism and the Search for Alternatives

International public and private sector players are currently exhibiting considerable predatory interest in Africa, viewing the continent as a source of vast natural resources as well as potential markets. This is happening at a time when deepening fractures and inequalities within African countries, increasing immiseration and soaring unemployment characterise living conditions across the continent. Growth without the furtherance of people’s wellbeing is at the heart of so-called economic development. The economic models adopted by many African governments have been based on extractivism, or the predatory exploitation of all kinds of resources – bodies, labour, land, oil and mineral resources, water resources, food – in a bid to maximise profit. Extractivism goes beyond the extraction of oil and mineral resources as commodities; it is instead a characteristic of the deepening of capitalism in the context of neoliberal globalisation.