Anuarite Bashizi’s research while affiliated with Catholic University of Louvain and other places

Since February 2020, we have witnessed COVID-19 profoundly disturb ongoing research dynamics – including research collaborations between the Global North and the Global South. Reduced international and regional mobility obliged research collaborations to reinvent their modalities. The role of field-based researchers (those physically ‘there’) has never been more crucial. This article draws on the testimonies of researchers from the African Great Lakes region to reflect on the positionality of field-based researchers in North–South research collaborations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Their embeddedness in the field foregrounded their complementary strengths in interactions with scholars from the Global North. We also illustrate how vulnerabilities – both unstable employment and field-related risks – were unevenly shared by partners in the Global South and the Global North. In conclusion, the COVID-19 experience inspired us to adhere to new collaboration modalities that move beyond post-colonial dynamics in North–South research collaborations.

Studying the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo using a grounded approach, Anuarite Bashizi, Cécile Giraud and Aymar Nyenyezi Bisoka adopt a Marxian and ecopolitical analytical framework in order to consider the interconnexions between ecological deterioration and primary resources, post-colonial politics and international financial institutions, class struggle and the international division of labour. In emphasizing the systematic race relations that structure the exploitation of the racialized work force as well as the access to natural resources, and underlining the heritage of colonialism in the form of “global coloniality”, the authors argue that a decolonial approach to political ecology and to Marxist capitalist analysis is necessary in order to apprehend the realities of exploitation in Africa.

This article reflects on the Anthropocene against the backdrop of armed conflict. To this end, it analyses two mining projects: one in southwestern Antioquia in Colombia and the other in the Luhwindja Chiefdom in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After examining the post-agreement and post-war political contexts of each country, this paper describes the extraction projects implemented in the territories, as well as the forms of resistance of the local populations. It also depicts the reconstruction of the territory as a place for cognitive production, affective participation, and discursive imagination. The very concept of territory is re-signified, beyond its geographical definition, as a territory of life.

L’article part du cas d’étude de la chefferie de Luhwindja – une collectivité située à l’est de la RDC – où, depuis l’année 2005, est mis en oeuvre un programme de modernisation minière à travers la multinationale canadienne dénommée Banro. Au-delà de ses effets sur les conditions de vie des populations locales et leur environnement, l’article rend compte de la manière dont la modernisation minière a reconfiguré les dynamiques sociales locales et transformé le rapport des populations locales à l’autorité. D’où l’on déduit le caractère d’une modernité insécurisée. Se basant sur les entretiens, les discussions en groupe, l’observation et l’expérience des auteurs, l’étude renseigne que la modernisation minière, en ayant promu l’investissement privé et attiré des entreprises capitalistes dans les régions minières en RDC, ces dernières ont déstructuré les équilibres de pouvoir existant dans l’arène locale, et ce, par la répression et l’instrumentalisation des luttes sociales locales existantes. C’est cette logique de diviser pour régner – susceptible de contribuer et de renforcer la fragmentation sociale – qui a alors rendu possible le processus de modernisation minière malgré toutes les stratégies de résistance des populations dans les zones concernées en République démocratique du Congo.

In this contribution, we examine how people living around industrial gold mining concessions in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) view themselves in relation to the extractive industries. We apply Hall’s notion of articulation to grasp the layering of extractive subject formation in time and space, or what we call the “sedimentation of subjectivities”. The lens of articulation allows for a better understanding of how people engage with the subject positions they are interpellated into. Specifically, it helps uncover how this engagement is imprinted by subjects’ socio-economic position and historically shaped forms of social identification. The notion of sedimentation, in turn, enables us to trace how the crystallization of subjectivities in one particular conjuncture influences subsequent processes of subject formation – a dynamic with distinct spatial dimensions. People’s sense of place, including how they relate to the soil and subsoil, is an important vector of these historical influences. In sum, the notion of sedimented subjectivities captures the spatio-temporal dimensions of subject formation over the longue durée. It therefore helps establish the enduring influence of “colonial residue” on contemporary subject formation. In addition, our approach sheds further light on the overall modest imprint of the governmental schemes of extractive corporations on extractive subject formation. We ascribe this to the heterogeneity and sedimentation of the elements that shape subject formation and the dispersed nature of processes of interpellation. These observations further underscore the pertinence of a spatio-temporal perspective on subject formation.

The article stems from the case study of the chiefdom of Luhwindja – a community located in the east of the DRC – where, since 2005, a mining modernization program has been implemented through the Canadian multinational Banro. Beyond its effects on the living conditions of local populations and their environment, the article reports on how mining modernization has reconfigured local social dynamics and transformed the relationship between local populations and authority. From which we deduce a character of insecure modernity. Based on the interviews, group discussions, observation, and experience of the authors, the study informs that the modernization of mining, having promoted private investment and attracted capitalist companies in the mining regions of the DRC, have destructured the balance of power existing in local communities, by repressing and instrumentalizing existing local social struggles. It is this logic of divide and conquer – likely to contribute to and reinforce social fragmentation – that in turn enabled the establishment of the mining modernization process despite all the resistance strategies of the populations in this part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We use the concept of "deterritorialization" to explore current perceptions of the local community on the delocalisation strategy by Twangiza mining in the "territory" of Luhwindja in South Kivu, 15 years after the mining company relocated households. A random sample of 250 households were surveyed after 9 semi-structured interviews with key informants and 3 focus groups in 2019. We measure perceptions on the deterritorialization through an index. Results indicate that households of Luhwindja are negative on Twangiza mining's delocalisation strategy. Perceptions are based on effects of this strategy: limitations of access to market, to business opportunities, to basic infrastructures and to social networks. Twangiza mining delocalization strategy allowed for significant differences in socioeconomic characteristics between delocalized and non-delocalized households. In the context of industrial mining in rural communities, the analysis of deterritorialization indicates that the socioeconomic aspects of populations are necessary in the perception of communities than other aspects and are factors on which any household relocation policy should be based. For the strategy of delocalisation, we propose to consider the territory in its plurality.

During the COVID-19 crisis in Africa, several contradictory discourses have tried to predict how the continent will experience the pandemic. Based on a qualitative approach, this article goes beyond generalized and arbitrary predictions and analyzes how three countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have managed the pandemic. We first analyze which measures the respective governments of the three countries – and their decentralized authorities – have taken. We also analyze up to which extend international prescriptions – as propagated by the World Health Organization – have influenced their choices. Second, we analyze how government measures have transformed throughout implementation and interacted with the specific circumstances of each context. Authorities, on the one hand, navigated between rigid and more flexible interpretation of national prescriptions, entering into practical arrangements or adopting force. Populations on the other hand have resorted to acceptance, circumvention, contestation or resistance. Our research ultimately points to the way in which political dynamics, resistance, violence, and local redefine both national policies and their international reference frames. In this way, the governance dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the African Great Lakes region provide a lens through which we can complexify our understandings of real governance in Africa.