The Political Economy of China's Infrastructure Development in Africa

This book sheds light on structural drivers that led to the Chinese omnipresence in African infrastructure markets and offers a strategic-relational approach to the study of African agency in Sino-African infrastructure encounters. Case studies cover the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA), Zambia's road sector as well as Tanzania's Bagamoyo port and Standard Gauge Railway. It is shown that African (state) agency in the infrastructure sector is contingent upon dynamic state-society relations and distinct political-economic contexts and constraints. The book problematises contradictions related to infrastructure debt, the emergence of Sino-African public-private partnerships and the intensifying geopolitics-cum-geoeconomics of infrastructure across Africa.

Combines theorisation of Sino-African infrastructure cooperation with in-depth case studies from Tanzania and Zambia Develops an original structurally grounded approach to the study of African agency in Sino-African relations Adds nuance to the highly politicised debates about Chinese-owned African debt in times of intensifying geopolitics

Autorentext

Tim Zajontz is Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the University of Freiburg, Research Fellow in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University and Research Associate in the Second Cold War Observatory.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Chinese capital and its spatio-temporal fix.- Chapter 3: Theorising African state agency.- Chapter 4: The destiny of the Freedom Railway: From anti-imperialism to accumulation by dispossession?.- Chapter 5: Divergent state agency: Zambia's debt impasse and Magufuli's nationalist infrastructure state.- Chapter 6: The price of the Sino-Zambian 'road bonanza'.- Chapter 7: The political economy of 'not so public' procurement.- Chapter 8: Towards a 'new era' of Sino-African infrastructure cooperation.