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Bringing ‘indigenous’ ownership back: Chinese presence and the Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission in Zambia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2012

Peter Kragelund
Peter Kragelund*
Affiliation:
Roskilde University, Department of Society and Globalisation, Universitetsvej 1, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
*
Email: jpk@ruc.dk
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Abstract

African economies are currently experiencing an upsurge in foreign ownership of key parts of their economies. This, however, is not new, and in the wake of independence several African countries pursued indigenisation policies to bring ownership back to their own citizens. Now indigenisation policies thrive again, this time disguised in terms such as ‘empowerment’, but just as politicised as in the 1970s. Zambia is at the heart of this development. In the light of liberalisation, booming commodity prices and the increasing importance of Chinese investors, this article seeks to further our understanding of how processes of exclusion interact with domestic politics in Zambia. It argues that the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission, a new institution to bring ownership back to Zambians, builds on a long tradition of nationalist policies in Zambia, while its actual work is strictly related to the critique of the growing foreign dominance over the economy, and in particular of the upsurge in Chinese investments.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 447 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

The support of the Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (Project 932) in funding this research is gratefully acknowledged as are the comments on earlier drafts of this paper from Lisa Ann Richey, Joan Haig and three anonymous referees. The usual caveats apply.

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