Research
African hubs, Chinese trade, and Global Circulation
In 2023, I was awarded the Hallsworth Fellowship in Political Economy at the Global Development Institute of the University of Manchester, UK. The project (Jan 2024-Dec 2026) explores the internationalisation of Chinese private capital in West Africa to understand the impact these dynamics have on regional integration. Specifically, the project focuses on the Chinese participation in African trade and the impact of increased presence of Chinese private capital (i.e. FDI) more broadly on West African economies and industrialisation.
The data collection is taking place through a triangulation of methods, such as semi-structured interviews, geolocalisation and ethnographic observations in both Ghana and Togo. Participants range from government officials and bureaucrats to local market sellers and managers of Chinese companies operating in West Africa.
The project has received additional funding from the International Science Partnership Fund for Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) Activities 2023.
Academic Publications
Africa’s renewed push towards infrastructure development brought with it new forms of territorialisation tied to both capital and labour. Infrastructures are expected to connect specific African hubs to global trade flows, promote industrialisation and increase employment rates, yet they often struggle to fulfil said promises. We explore the relationship between Africa’s ‘infrastructure turn’ and changing labour relations through the case of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor in West Africa. Drawing from critical infrastructure studies and broader work in labour geography, we use the concept of suspension as a lens to illuminate a variety of processes – occurring across varied temporalities and scales – that are imbricated in the construction of different forms of infrastructural labour. We posit that infrastructure development as currently structured simultaneously (i) reinforces geopolitical inequities in the division of labour in the design and implementation of infrastructure projects; (ii) fosters competition amongst states for value and trade capture; and (iii) prompts contestation and disavowal in the context of the construction of specific projects. These three distinct, yet inter-related ways in which infrastructure development entangles with labour dynamics highlight that the work of imagining and crafting infrastructural promise creates pathways for novel, and often contested, configurations of labour relations.
Read this paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2024.2357574
Extensive engagement in infrastructure development has brought to the forefront how China-Africa relations are increasingly unfolding beyond government-to-government agreements and elite relations. This chapter explores labour relations in Sino-African construction sites to illuminate ‘practices in the making’ emerging from said encounters. With a specific focus on the Lamu Port construction site in Northern Kenya, the chapter delves into the practice of 'living at work,' capturing spatial, material, and social dimensions of Sino-African workplace dynamics. Drawing from Doreen Massey's conceptualisation of place, the chapter posits a dynamic understanding of workplace dynamics at the intersection of narratives within and beyond Sino-African construction sites. The qualitative analysis, based on ethnographic observations and interviews conducted by the first author at Lamu port, uncovers the nuanced intersections of labour relations, managerial practices, and social connections.
Read this paper here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/africas-global-infrastructures-9780197775363?q=Africa%27s%20Global%20Infrastructures&lang=en&cc=us
This paper critically analyses Africa’s ‘Ports Race’, the massive increase in port infrastructure investment taking place across the continent since the mid-2000s. It argues that the phenomenon shapes, and is shaped by, three interconnected trends: (1) an emerging material–political–institutional lock-in to a new extractivist paradigm of capital accumulation; (2) continental governments’ growing embrace of state-led development strategies; and (3) the repackaging of globalized discourses of connectivity and idealized visions of modernity by elites to legitimize both their own political positions and what are often exploitative and environmentally destructive practices/processes. Taken together, these developments point to novel configurations of engagement playing out across the continent between transnational capital and political elites.
Read this paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2022.2115933
This chapter explored Chinese interests in African transport corridors, suggesting that participation in Africa’s transport corridor development is prompting Chinese companies in related and unrelated sectors to venture along corridor routes to expand their businesses.
Read this paper here: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2x4kp3n.17
Infrastructure development has experienced a political renaissance in Africa and is again at the centre of national, regional, and continental development agendas. At the same time, China has been identified by African policy-makers as a particularly suitable strategic partner. As infrastructure has become a main pillar of Sino-African cooperation, there has been growing analytical interest in the role of African actors in shaping the terms and conditions and, by extension, the implementation of infrastructure projects with Chinese participation. This follows a more general African “agency turn” in China–Africa studies, which has shifted the research focus onto the myriad ways in which African state and non-state actors shape the continent's engagements with China. This article is situated within this growing body of literature and explores different forms of African state agency in the context of Tanzania's planned Bagamoyo port, Ethiopia's Adama wind farms, and Kenya’s Lamu port. We posit a non-reductionist and social-relational ontology of the (African) state which sees the state as a multifaceted and multi-scalar institutional ensemble. We show that the extent and forms of state agency exerted are inherently interrelated with and, thus, highly contingent upon concrete institutional, economic, political, and bureaucratic contexts in which African state actors are firmly embedded. In doing so, we make the case for a context-sensitive analysis of various spheres of state agency in particular conjunctures of Sino-African engagement.
Read this paper here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-022-00214-8
Infrastructure has historically been both a tool and a reflection of state power, and current development agendas across the African continent are contributing to reposition the state as driver of development. Simultaneously, diverging agendas amongst state and parastate actors, as well as the involvement of private or foreign actors produce a complex and layered political reality. Increasing involvement of Chinese actors in infrastructure projects calls for further investigation of the impact Chinese participation has on relations amongst state and non-state actors in African nations. Using the case study of Lamu port project in Northern Kenya, financed by the Kenyan government but constructed by a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise, this article focuses on the controversies involving the national government and Lamu county government. This paper highlights how the presence of Chinese actors has both reproduced pre-existing geographies of power, but also contributed to the emergence of new power-geometries.
Read this paper here: https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.089.0098
Other Publications
Gambino, E. (2023) “Does the private sector matter to Xi’s foreign economic policy?”, China-Global South Project. [available here]
Gambino, E. (2023) “Africa: nuove sfide per Pechino” [Africa: New Challenges for Beijing], Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI). [available here]
Gambino, E. (2022) "Verso obbiettivi comuni: l'evoluzione delle relazioni Cina-Africa nel XXI secolo" [Towards common objectives: the evolution of China-Africa relations in the 21st century], Italianieuropei, 2022(I), pp. 87-96.
Reboredo, R. and Gambino, E. (2022) “Africa’s Port race is hyped as ‘development’ but also creates pathways for plunder”, The Conversation. [available here]
Gambino, E. (2020) “Job insecurity, labour contestation, and everyday resistance at the Chinese-built Lamu port site in Kenya”, The Asia Dialogue. [available here]
Podcasts
The Politics of Chinese-financed Infrastructure Development in East Africa
Listen to this podcast here
