Seminar: Efter 30 års borgerkrig i Angola – genopbygning af samfund og økonomi

Time: Friday, 13 May at 10 – 12 hours

Venue: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, 1401 Copenhagen K

Background

Time: Friday, 13 May at 10 – 12 hours

Venue: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, 1401 Copenhagen K

Background

Angolan state resources were partly privatized after the Cold War, resulting in elite oligopolies in every major economic sector. After 2002, Angola’s political economy was reconfigured away from wartime methods but in a manner that consolidated the position of leading actors.

In addition to the predictable rentier schemes of an oil-rich reconstruction, foreign direct investment (FDI) is placed at the service of an “indigenization” policy premised on joint ventures with local partners. Elite beneficiaries of this process now own major business groups with considerable clout.

This presentation, which is based on a collaborative project with Manuel Ennes Ferreira, will provide a portrait of Angola’s capitalism and seek to answer the following questions:

What is the long-term political impact of the new business class? What sort of ideas about the state and the economy prevail amongst this enormously wealthy and politically hegemonic group? What is the likelihood of such rentier strategies producing genuine entrepreneurship? Can the creation of a local capital-holding class have positive consequences, however counter-intuitive, for the poor masses?

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is University Lecturer in Comparative Politics (African Politics) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.

He has had visiting fellowships at Yale University, theWoodrow Wilson Center, and Sciences Po, and is the author of Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea (Columbia UP, 2007) and co-editor (with Chris Alden and Daniel Large) of China Returns to Africa (Columbia UP, 2008).

This is the seventh seminar in the Business-State Relations and Economic Development seminar series being held this spring at DIIS.

SPEAKERS
* Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, University Lecturer, University of Oxford
* Lindsay Whitfield, Project Senior Researcher, DIIS

PROGRAMME
09.30 – 10
Arrival and Coffee

10 -11
Post-War Reconstruction and the Making of Angolan Capitalism – Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, University of Oxford

11.00-12.00
Open Discussion

Chair: Lindsay Whitfield, Project Senior Researcher, DIIS

The seminar will be held in English.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use the online registration form.

And do so no later than Thursday, 12 May at 12.00 noon.

Please await confirmation by e-mail from DIIS for participation.

Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), The Conference Section, Strandgade 56, 1401 Kbn K, tlf. 32 69 87 51, e-mail: [email protected] og web: www.diis.