In the Spotlight: "Understanding Today's Africa: a revealing research"

In recent years, Africa has been through quite some change. New discoveries of natural resources, economic growth and a growing consumers market have led to much optimism.

As a result, the prospect of tremendous gain has attracted external capital and foreign companies alike. And triggered a construction boom in infrastructure. In this conjuncture, the strong presence of new players from the Global South in Africa, especially China, but also other emerging economies such as Brazil and India is particularly eye-catching

While not near to end aid dependency in several parts of the continent, the greater importance of these alternative players has contributed towards a diversification of Africa’s foreign policy options away from over-reliance on the West. Through greater choice and diversity, there is now more bargaining power for Africans to negotiate agreements on better terms. Yet, this has not gone uncontested. Criticism ranging from the unfair nature of deals, to the poor quality of works, to the negligence of human rights abounds.

This is the geopolitical backdrop orientating Eric Cezne’s PhD research. He looks particularly at how these dynamics play out in Mozambique: a post-conflict African country, which still relies on Western aid, but where investments and businesses from countries like China, Brazil and India are increasingly important in its political economy.

Eric’s project ambitions to generate tools to understand South-South relations more broadly, bringing experiences of globalization beyond the West into focus, and shedding fresh light on the advancement of emerging actors into Africa. Methodologically, the research revolves around desk studies and ethnographic methods, and includes fieldwork in Mozambique.

Eric Cezne