Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism / Africa Connects (PDF)

contribution to the rich literature on the Zambian Copperbelt which has for so long been a testing ground for the complex inter-relationships between mineral dependent economic growth, global forces, internal development trajectories, and political and social change in developing countries." - Deborah Potts, Cities Research Group, Geography Department, King's College London, UK

"Zambia's copper mines are back in business . . .in a very different world with increasing varieties of capitalisms. Zambia now has to relate to the BRICs and not the NAM; to a China of the Olympics rather than Tazara. But the developmental vision of such novelresource governance remains almost as problematic as when Cecil Rhodes had a dream. A new, engaged generation of analysts examine local to global prospects at the turn of another decade and era." - Timothy M. Shaw, Professor and Director, Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies

"So-called policy reform in Zambia, driven by the World Bank and the IMF, was a scandal that deindustrialized the economy, impoverished the Copperbelt, and fostered rampant corruption. Fraser and Larmer's Zambia, Mining and Neoliberalism offers the definitive analysis of this sorry tale." - John Weeks, Professor Emeritus, SOAS, University of London, UK

"Fraser and Larmer's book Zambia, Mining and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust in the Globalized Copperbelt is perhaps one of the best books to be written on the Zambian copper industry in the last four decades. This collection of essays analyzes the contemporary political economy of Zambia's copper industry and locates the struggles for the control of the country's mineral wealth within the context of globalized capitalism. Rich in empirical detail, this book provides a fresh theorization on the problems faced by resource-dependent economies in negotiating favorable terms from their mineral wealth when faced with pressures from foreign multinationals on one hand and local communities on the other, under an uncertain international economic environment. This is a remarkable, ground-breaking contribution to the literature on African development in general and mining development in particular, as it uses the Zambian case to illustrate the difficult choices that political leaders have to make and the pressures they face in trying to realize realistic returns from mineral wealth. It should be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how global capitalism impacts the negotiating power of resource-rich developing countries and how mineral price volatility has constrained the space for political leaders to extract attractive concessions from multinational corporations with negative effects to their populations." - Neo Simutanyi, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Dialogue, Lusaka, Zambia

"This uncommonly tight, timely, and intellectually sharp volume sets the recent history of boom and bust in the Zambian mining economy in a longer historical timeframe. Its key contribution lies in demonstrating precisely why neo-liberal orthodoxies have served Zambia so poorly." - Paul Nugent, Professor of Comparative African History, University of Edinburgh, UK