Finance and Africapitalism - friend or foe?

Organised by

• Department of Economics
• Department of History
• Department of Law
• Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• Development and External Relations Service
• Finance and society

Socio-economic development in Africa faces many obstacles, from the colonial legacy of privileged economic sectors to forms of government that are not suitable for large and thinly populated territorial states. Western capital has mostly been interested in the extraction of resources like oil and, more recently, rare earths. Africapitalism is a development paradigm that suggests that domestic group-owned and community-based businesses supported by sustainable finance can play a crucial role in empowering rural and urban areas in African countries. How realistic is this ethically motivated paradigm in an era of another industrial revolution driven by financial speculation? Digitalisation feeds on the exploitation of labour in the Global South and its enormous energy demands make countries in Africa again primarily the suppliers of raw materials for electrification and energy storage. The massive financial interests in this transformation may mean back to the future for capitalism in Africa.

To discuss the viability of Africapitalism we invited two key witnesses, Kenneth Amaeshi (Florence School of Transnational Governance, The New Institute), who is the leading proponent of the paradigm, and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (Director at the Centre of Capitalism Studies at the University College London, The New Institute), who sees financialised capitalism as inherently opposed to financial justice and social solidarity.