Update: The event has been cancelled due to the speaker’s ill health. Unfortunately, this was a last-minute decision, and we sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause. We plan to reschedule the event at a later date and will be in touch with further details in due course. Thank you for your understanding.

Please join the Department of International Development at KCL for a book talk with Ben Radley about his new book, "Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus". Dr Christian Otchia and Dr Ingrid Kvangraven will also join as discussants.

About the book

Since the turn of the century, low-income African countries have undergone a process of mining industrialization led by transnational corporations. The process has been sustained by an African Mining Consensus uniting international financial institutions, African governments, development agencies, and various strands of the academic literature. The Consensus position is that mining industrialization can drive transformative processes of social and economic development in low-income African settings. For this, state-owned enterprises and local forms of labour-intensive mining are deemed unsuitable. The former is characterized as corrupt and mismanaged, and the latter as an inefficient, subsistence activity with links to conflict financing. The Consensus holds, instead, that mining industrialization should be led by the superior expertise and efficiency of transnational corporations.

Disrupted Development in the Congo reveals the fragile foundations on which this Consensus rests. Through an in-depth case study of mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ben Radley details how foreign corporations have been prone to mismanagement, inefficiencies, and rent-seeking, and implicated in fuelling conflict and violence. He also documents how structural impediments to the transformative effects of mining industrialization in low-income African countries occur irrespective of ownership and management structures. Based on the findings presented, Radley urges a move away from the market-led logics underpinning the Consensus. In the mining sector itself, he argues that efforts to mechanize labour-intensive forms of local mining better meet the needs of low-income African economies for rising productivity, labour absorption, and the domestic retention of the value generated by productive activity than the currently dominant but disruptive foreign corporate-led model.

Discussants

Dr. Christian Otchia

Dr. Christian Otchia is an Associate Professor of Development Economics at the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan, where he teaches Development Microeconomics and Industrial Development. He is an affiliate member of the African Growth and Development Policy modeling consortium and has extensive experience in industrial policy design and implementation, collaborating with local governments and organizations like FAO and UNECA. His research focuses on the impact of special economic zones on local development through skills and technology transfer. Dr. Otchia holds a PhD in International Development (Nagoya University) and has published in several academic journals.

Dr Ingrid Kvangraven

Ingrid joined the Department of International Development at King’s in September 2021. She obtained her PhD in Economics from The New School in 2018 and held a lectureship at the University of York prior to joining King's. Her work goes beyond disciplinary boundaries, drawing on development economics, international political economy, economic history and development studies. Her research is broadly centered on questions of uneven development, international financial subordination, and decolonizing economics. Regionally, her focus has been on African political economy.

About the Interrogating Development Seminar Series

The 'Interrogating Development' seminar series is organised by the Department of International Development at King's College London. The series examines some of the most pressing issues of development facing global society today, with the authors of new books presenting cutting-edge research on a variety of topics related to development.

The talk will be followed by a wine reception. The event is open to everyone.