I’m pleased to announce the publication of a co-authored article with my PhD candidate Gabriel Kamundala from Bukavu, Eastern DRC, in Geoforum titled Whose underground? Entangled Territorialization and Mining Cooperatives in Eastern Congo’s gold frontier, which will remain open access for the next 50 days.

The article discusses the problematic formalization of small-scale gold mining by analyzing the geography of underground access to this natural resource – which remains contended between customary authorities, state administration and local cooperatives.

In so doing, we assess the pitfalls of recent supply chain restructuring in the extractives industry which, more often than not, externalizes the costs of rising consumer awareness around so-called ‘conflict minerals’ onto the miners and their extended social networks, thus generating new dynamics of inequality and discrimination.

foto courtesy digital gold

I’m happy to share the program of the symposium I just attended at Cornell University’s Global Development Programme in Ithaca, NY, Imagining Just Environmental and Climate Futures in Africa with a wonderful group of colleagues form Africa and the US.

In my key-note lecture for this conference, I invited the audience to think through the implications of recent capitalist restructuring in mineral and agri-food supply chains from an environmental justice and critical race perspective, building on recent work in Central Africa and the Mediterranean. I’m extremely grateful to the organizers, particularly the program’s director, Rachel Bezner Kerr, and her PhD candidate Emily Baker, for giving us such a warm welcome and an inspiring couple of days.