The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus by Ben Radley is part of the OUP-DSA book series Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies.

• Returns to and adapts some of the classic critiques of peripheral development to challenge the consensus view that transnational mining corporations are best placed to drive mining-led industrialization in Africa
• Offers a conceptual reframing of how we write, think about, and discuss African mining, distinguishing more clearly between different forms based on capital intensity and ownership
• Argues efforts to mechanize labour-intensive forms of local mining better meet the needs of low-income African economies for rising productivity, labour absorption and the domestic retention of the value generated by productive activity
• Connects to and complements the global value chains and industrial policy literatures

Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa

From the DSA-OUP book series Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies

• Challenges dominant approaches in development studies and urban studies to provide a novel explanation of different trajectories of urban development in Africa in the twenty-first century
• Provides an in-depth comparative study of urban change in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda based on field research spanning over a decade
• Situates East Africa as the ‘global urban frontier’ and the most vital region for interrogating contemporary urban dynamics
• Shows how causal factors located at the regional, national and city scale are crucial in understanding patterns of urban development

• Offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the political economy of nutrition, biotechnology, trade, and agricultural policies
• Adopts diverse methodologies including economic modelling, qualitative case studies, and discourse analysis
• Identifies which political economy issues are cross-cutting and which are context-specific
• An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence