Two-day workshop: Ruptures and riches: a multidisciplinary exploration of African mineral resource extraction

This event is organised and facilitated by participants in the Boom to Dust research project and the Collaborative Research Group Patterns of Living in Southern Africa, 1780s to the present.

For the third time in as many years, the African Studies Centre will be hosting a two-day workshop within the context of the African Studies Research Master taught in Leiden on 20 and 21 March 2025. Participants from Boom to Dust and the CRG Patterns of Living in Southern Africa, 1780s to the present and invited national and international guests will partake investigating and reporting on the lasting legacy of mineral resource extraction in Africa from the past through to the present and envisaged futures. Along with renowned guests, Prof. dr Rita Kesselring (St. Gallen, Switzerland), Dr Elijah Doro  (Rachel Carson Centre, Munich, Germany) and Dr Lorenzo D’Angelo (Sapienza, Rome, Italy), presenters include students from the BA level through to PhD students and grizzled academics nearing retirement.

As in previous years the workshop is organised and run by the students in the ResMa African Studies. This third instalment is the largest thus far and will feature no less than 16 speakers. Speakers, irrespective of their seniority, be they BA student, PhD Student, or grumpy Prof, will present papers and speak for thirty minutes each, whereafter there will be fifteen minutes of discussion for every paper presented. The papers presented explore, from various disciplinary perspectives, the urgent need to understand the impacts of mineral resource within an African context. While mineral extraction in Africa has contributed to environmental degradation, it paradoxically remains crucial to the continent's socio-economic and political future, especially as the "green transition" increased the demand for new minerals and metals. This workshop is dedicated to examining the complex effects of this phenomenon on the natural environment, as well as on socio-economic and political relations across Africa.   

The programme has been structured in such a manner as to allow for a large amount of informal contact during numerous tea, coffee and meal breaks.

The full programme can be viewed on the Boom2Dust website.

Highlight of the workshop will be the Book Presentation of Prof. Rita Kesselring’s latest publication: Extraction, Global Commodity Trade, & Urban Development In Zambia's Northwestern Province: An Ethnography Of Inequality And Interdependence (Zed Press; 2025) on Thursday 20 March at 17h30.

Rita Kesselring provides a compelling ethnographic account of the wildly uneven, deeply interconnected development trajectories of Solwezi, a copper mining town in Zambia, and Zug, an urban hub for metal trading firms in Switzerland. In so doing, she provides a valuable open access case study of the asymmetrical interdependencies that global capitalism creates between towns and cities in the Global North and Global South.

Through detailed storytelling, Kesselring explores the lives and routines of state officials, residents, mine managers, and mine employees in Solwezi. From there, she follows Solwezi’s copper as it makes its way through shipping, financing, and trading.

Highlighting the key actors in this value chain, Kesselring reveals not only the central role Switzerland plays in Southern Africa's mining industry, but also the central role that Southern Africa plays in Switzerland’s status as a leading service commodity trading hub— thanks primarily to the constant flow of wealth from Zambia to Switzerland.

What emerges from this detailed portrait of inequitable interdependencies is a new way forward. It is only through joint solidarity action between such vastly different but inherently connected places, Kesselring argues, that the world can arrive at more equitable North-South economic relationships.

Those not invited yet wishing to attend the workshop or book launch in person are asked to register for the event.

The workshop will not be online.

If you'd like more information on this workshop, please contact Maaike Rozema and Walker Swindell.