Radical political economy and industrialisation in Africa: ROAPE/Third World Network-Africa Connections workshop, held in Accra, Ghana, 13–14 November 2017

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Notes

1. In my locality in the UK a social housing enterprise whose objective is to provide affordable tenant housing has been engaged in selling properties in low-value housing areas and buying them in higher-value growth areas to generate higher incomes, effectively seeking returns that match the financial markets, even though they are supposed to be non-profit organisations. Here like everywhere, returns have to match the highest that can be obtained in financial casinos.

2. For a fuller explanation of transfer pricing and mispricing see the website of the Tax Justice Network: https://www.taxjustice.net/topics/corporate-tax/transfer-pricing/.

3. The Paradise Papers are the result of a data leak from which a consortium of investigative journalists exposed the offshore and largely secret holdings of large corporations which diverted funds from their national economies to the large number of offshore tax-exempt jurisdictions around the world, thus losing national governments vast amounts of tax revenue (Fitzgibbon and Starkman 2017).

1. Members of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) bloc of countries.

1. There are many definitions available, including from La Via Campesina. One from their newsletter suggests, ‘Food Sovereignty is a living concept because of continuing alliance work. It is the struggle for local food systems based on agroecology; access to local markets; access to and control over productive resources such as land, water, seeds, etc; recognition of peasant rights; and resistance to industrial agriculture, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Transnational Corporations (TNCs)’ (Nyéléni Newsletter 2017, 2).

2. Ultimately even ‘full’ Independence was not full, with colonists retaining land until 1964, banks expropriated with payment, and military bases remaining for some time on Tunisian soil.

1. See Bettina Engels (2017), ‘Le pain et la liberté’: a tribute to André Tibiri', http://roape.net/2017/06/22/le-pain-et-la-liberte-tribute-andre-tibiri/.

1. The head of the task force, Colonel Amoah Ayisi, stated on 30 January 2018 that 366 excavators, 3100 dredgers known as Champhi and 859 water pumping machines had been seized in the eight-month operation, while bemoaning the fact that the prosecution of arrested miners was slow: https://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2018/January-30th/only-10-of-galamsey-suspects-convicted-operation-vanguard-laments-slow-prosecution.php.

2. See list of interviews after references for fuller details.

3. ‘Chiefs and political figures were cited in a report by the Bureau of National Investigations for involvement in illegal mining’: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2017/May-5th/chiefs-politicians-others-cited-in-bni-report-on-galamsey.php.

4. A recent study by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD – Ghana) found that in 2016, ‘On average [successful parliamentary] candidates needed to raise approximately GHS 390,000 [approx. US$86,000] to secure the party primary nomination and compete in the parliamentary election in their constituency’. This sum had increased by 59% between the 2012 and 2016 parliamentary elections. MPs' annual salaries are US$51,000 (WFD 2018).

5. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1255126/low-costs-and-huge-profits-irresistible-lure-chinese-mine-ghanas-gold. Although this number is impossible to verify, given the irregular nature of the migration, this approximate figure of 50,000 is commonly cited and has been confirmed rather than contradicted in subsequent interviews with returned miners and local officials in Shanglin County (Botchwey et al. 2018).

6. Daily Graphic, 15 March 2013. However, the media was also responsible for some xenophobia against Chinese miners (Tschakert 2016), with Chinese miners referred to as ‘illegal, undesirable migrants’ (Daily Graphic, 29 March 2013), ‘deviants’ (Daily Graphic, 25 February 2013), ‘aliens’ (Daily Graphic, 5 March 2013), and for the scapegoating of foreigners for problems that had much wider origins within the national landscape, as discussed here.

7. Abdulai (2017b, 2) makes a similar point that ‘people who have the responsibility to curb illegal mining activities tend to benefit from them’.

8. For instance, one case is that of the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the NPP, Bernard Antwi Boasiako, and CEO of Hansol Mining Limited, who is steeped in allegations about involvement with Chinese miners in galamsey activities, ones which at best could be described as inhabiting a grey area between legal and illegal mining. See article by Chinese journalist Yang Meng (2014) at http://africachinareporting.co.za/2015/01/sweltering-heat-golden-dreams-chinese-galamsey-in-ghana/.

9. Bernard Antwi Boasiako, also known as ‘Chairman Wontumi’, the Ashanti Regional chairman of the (now ruling) New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Managing Director of HANSOL Mining Limited boasted on radio that he made ‘a whopping US$ 1million a day’ before the military taskforce sent in by President Mahama ransacked his operations in mid 2013 on suspicion that the company had had brought in Chinese nationals engaged in illegal mining (Ghanaweb 2015).