1st Edition
Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa The Neoliberal Period
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market ‘irregularities’, including matters of trickery, parallel economy, illicit trade, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It investigates economic crime as a phenomenon of neoliberal reform and transformation, and it unpacks crime as a societal – and particularly as a political-economic – phenomenon under capitalism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and updated blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986–2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net.
Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, this volume explores what these crimes have to do with, and can tell us about, state-business relations, regulation, capitalist transformation, and the corporation on the continent, shedding light on the co-production of the crimes by a range of actors from the realms of business, politics, state and international development, including major reform advocates such as international financial institutions (IFIs) and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa and to locate capitalism more centrally in the analysis of economic crimes, as more African countries move from being societies with capitalism to capitalist societies.
Illustrating the relevance of African countries to debates in criminology, corporate crime, state crime, crimes of the powerful and illegality, this volume engages with and mobilises a variety of literatures to analyse economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism and provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education a striking source of information and analysis.
Foreword
Yusuf K. Serunkuma
Introduction—Criminogenic capitalism in Africa, 2023: History, reality, and analysis
Jörg Wiegratz
Part A: Fraud in neoliberalised political economies
1. Cartels as ‘fraud’? Insights from collusion in southern and East Africa in the fertiliser and cement industries
Thando Vilakazi and Simon Roberts
2. The rise of microcredit ‘control fraud’ in post-apartheid South Africa: from state-enforced to market-driven exploitation of the black community
Milford Bateman
3. Black economic empowerment policy in Durban, eThekwini, South Africa: economic justice, economic fraud and ‘leaving money on the table’
Sarah Bracking
4. Fake drugs: health, wealth and regulation in Nigeria
Gernot Klantschnig and Chieh Huang
5. The political economy of intellectual property rights: the paradox of Article 27 exemplified in Ghana
Christiaan De Beukelaer and Martin Fredriksson
6. Anti-fraud Measures in Southern Africa
Nataliya Mykhalchenko and Jörg Wiegratz
Part B: Going Into the Archive I – Texts From Roape.net (2015-2023)
7. Financialisation and Illegal Capital Flight
Ben Fine
8. The London Fix: Price-Making in Capitalism
Khadija Sharife
9. Beyond ‘Capture’, the Gupta Coup d’état of the South African State: A historic repeat of state, finance, and global capitalism dynamics?
Elizabeth Cobbett
10. Grand Theft Sandton: Political corruption and corporate crime as South African capitalism
Patrick Bond
11. Reforming Sonangol: Oil, corruption, and the politics of economic reform in Angola
Liliane Mouan
12. Capitalism, war and plunder in the Horn of Africa
Mark Duffield and Nicholas Stockton
13. Exporting corporate crime with impunity
Thomas MacManus
14. Being cheated by your own relatives
Malin Nystrand
15. ‘Stealing back’ - Uganda’s Nasser Road, political posters, forgery and resistance
Kristof Titeca and Yusuf K. Serunkuma
Part C: Going Into the Archive II – Texts from the Print Journal (1986-2022)
16. The primitive accumulation of capital in a neo‐colony: the Nigerian case (published in 1986)
Festus Iyayi
17. Understanding African Politics (1995)
Chris Allen
18. Misunderstanding African Politics: Corruption & the Governance Agenda (1998)
Morris Szeftel
19. Between Governance & Underdevelopment: Accumulation & Africa's 'Catastrophic Corruption’ (2000)
Morris Szeftel
20. A Back Door to Globalisation? Structural Adjustment, Globalisation & Transborder Trade in West Africa (2003)
Kate Meagher
21. Evaluating Privatisation in Zambia: A Tale of Two Processes (2000)
John Craig
22. Conflict in Central Africa: Clandestine Networks & Regional/Global Configurations (2003)
Ian Taylor
23. Beyond minerals: broadening ‘economies of violence’ in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (2013)
Ann Laudati
24. The politics of incontournables: entrenching patronage networks in eastern Congo’s mineral markets (2021)
Christoph Vogel
25. ‘Illegal’ gold mining and the everyday in post-apartheid South Africa (2022)
Tapiwa Madimu
26. Crony capitalist deals and investment in South Africa’s platinum belt: a case study of Anglo American Platinum’s scramble for mining rights, 1995–2019 (2022)
Musa Nxele
27. International crude oil theft: elite predatory tendencies in Nigeria (2015)
Eddy Akpomera
28. Rentierism and security privatisation in the Nigerian petroleum industry: assessment of oil pipeline surveillance and protection contracts (2018)
Raymond Adibe, Ejikeme Nwagwu and Okorie Albert
29. Regulating Illicit Trade in Natural Resources: The Role of Regional Actors in West Africa (2003)
Emmanuel Kwesi Aning
30. ‘The first dragon to slay’: unpacking Kenya’s war on drugs (2016)
Margarita Dimova
31. Beyond forceful measures: Tanzania’s ‘war on poaching’ needs diversified strategies more than militarised tactics (2017)
Mathew Bukhi Mabele
32. Historical roots of militarised conservation: the case of Uganda (2021)
Ivan Ashaba
33. Anti-fraud measures in Western Africa and commentary on research findings across the three regions analysed (2022)
Nataliya Mykhalchenko and Jörg Wiegratz
Comments on Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa: The Neoliberal Period
Laureen Snider
Biography
Jörg Wiegratz is Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies. He is Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, and Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, United States International University-Africa, Nairobi. He specializes in neoliberalism, fraud and anti-fraud measures, commercialization and economic pressure and related aspects of moral and political economy, with a focus on Uganda and Kenya. He is member of the editorial working group of Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and author of Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio‑Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda, and co-editor of Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud (with David Whyte). He is editor of the blog series Economic trickery, fraud and crime in Africa and Capitalism in Africa (roape.net).
“In this critical, conceptually rich, and thought-provoking collection, Jörg Wiegratz has put together a unique and balanced combination of different types of previously published analyses - in combination with a number of new and updated texts - which are seamlessly intertwined. The collection, by focusing on a wide range of manifestations of crime, illegal markets, fraud and corruption, turns the criminological spotlight on an extremely interesting but largely neglected context. Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa: The Neoliberal Period will most certainly prompt a fruitful debate as it offers a convincing case about how neoliberalism has acted as a major enabler of criminality through deregulation and restructuring programmes that have been introduced by supranational actors. This is a mandatory reading for academics, law enforcement, and policy makers”.
- Professor Georgios A. Antonopoulos, Northumbria University at Newcastle, UK
“Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa brings a unique perspective to understanding the intricate operation of capitalist forces in Africa. The papers in this collection, written by a combination of senior and younger scholars studying capitalist dynamics in Africa, give readers a rare opportunity to encounter the often-concealed side of African capitalism. Written through the unfiltered lens of radical political economy, the essays have laid bare the different economic crimes, from the fixing of commodity prices (the famous London Fix), illicit capital flows, fake drugs to the fronting of conservation as an instrument for looting of natural resources and accumulation. The volume challenges the conventional explanations of the sources and causes of Africa’s economic challenges by exposing and centring economic crime as an integral part of capitalist formation on the continent. Being the first analysis of a wide range of economic crime, the collection offers an illuminating exposition of the inner mechanisms of Africa’s encounter with capitalism. This is a timely intervention and valuable contribution to the study of Africa's economic challenges.”
- Professor Horman Chitonge, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa
“Fraud and corruption in the majority world have been central to the predatory project of capitalism and colonialism. Sometimes used as a legitimating narrative for intervention, but often used simply to expropriate and extract value, fraud is a core technique of power over the Global South. Jörg Wiegratz has put together a definitive collection of essays that helps us understand how fraud and corruption sustain economic domination by the richest states and the richest corporations over the people. Nowhere is this technique of colonisation more enduring than it is in Africa. This is why Capitalism and Economic Crime in Africa is a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary capitalism and colonialism.”
- Professor David Whyte, Queen Mary University of London, UK
