Abstract:

There has been renewed interest in Africa-China relations in the last twenty years – and among the areas that have attracted some attention in academic literature and popular media is Chinese environmental footprint in Africa. Although existing literature on this subset of Africa-China relations appears to predominantly overlook the role of non-state actors (NSAs), they have nonetheless remained a recurring element in the engagement of Chinese environmental footprints in Africa. Building on an earlier work on the role of NSAs in Africa-China encounter wherein they have represented a “point of engagement” sometimes in the face of the “points of exit” of the African State, I will be discussing my approach to an ongoing research project entitled “Governance from below? Non-state actors and Chinese environmental footprints in Africa – The case of Ghana” at the Merian Institute of Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA). Aside the introductory section, the presentation will be broadly divided into three parts. The first part will use the case of Aisha Huang – a Chinese citizen that was arrested, released, expelled, and re-arrested in Ghana for illegal gold mining (or galamsey in the local parlance) – to illustrate the “point of exit” in Africa-China relations. The second section will interrogate “Greedy Men,” arguably the strongest criticism against Chinese environmental footprint (or galamsey) in Ghana, by Livingstone Etse Satekla (aka Stonebwoy), one of Ghana’s leading music stars, to illustrate not only “rhythmic opposition” but also a “point of engagement.” Beyond the episode of Aisha Huang and Stonebwoy’s rendition, however, the third part will raise important questions about concepts, shifts, reductionity, research ethics, positionality and beneficiality; all questions that will be discusses within the context of the ongoing MIASA project.

Abdul-Gafar Oshodi lectures in the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University and is a Research Associate at the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), University of the Witwatersrand. A Social Science Research Council (SSRC) ‘Next Generation of Social Science in Africa’ Fellow (2013-2014), Doctoral Fellow at KU Leuven’s Centre for Research on Peace and Development (2013-2017), University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies Catalyst Fellow (in 2019 and 2020), and an American Council of Learned Societies’ African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2021), his research is broadly centred around the “development question” in Africa with a strong bias for Africa-China relations, youth service, nation-building, research ethics and knowledge (re)production. He co-founded the Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN–West Africa).