Extractivism, informal work and strategies for political-economic transformation
Bettina Engels
Abstract
This issue focuses on two topics that are central to political economy in general, and African political economy in particular, and that have been intensively discussed in ROAPE over many decades: extractivism and the informal economy. Both are structural economic features all over the continent, and manifold social struggles relate to them. '[E]xtractivism is the dominant feature of most African economies. The absence of processes of structural transformation and the persistence of primary commodity dependence create highly porous extraverted economies, organised around extractive cores', as Elisa Greco outlined in the editorial of ROAPE 166 (Greco 2020, 511). Extractivism is thereby not limited to the exploitation of mineral and fossil resources but also includes agro-extractivism (Benegiamo 2020; see also Agrarian resources are likewise primary commodities that are widely exported from Africa to create value at other scales and locations rather than used to feed people on the continent.