IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cjssxx/v49y2023i1p25-47.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Building Angola: A Political Economy of Infrastructure Contractors in Post-War Angola

Author

Listed:
  • Fernandes Wanda
  • Carlos Oya
  • Borja Monreal

Abstract

Following the end of the civil war in 2002, Angola entered a period of political stability and economic growth that was sustained until the oil-price crisis hit the economy in 2015. During this period a vast reconstruction plan of economic infrastructure was implemented. This process induced a series of changes that shaped the construction industry in the country, especially the rise of Angolan contractors as a by-product of the primarily externally funded reconstruction effort. This article aims to understand the political economy of infrastructure building in Angola’s post-war reconstruction boom and the post-2015 crisis. We focus on the nature and dynamics of the emerging infrastructure market segmentation that led to the coexistence of Angolan, Chinese and other foreign contractors, when a part of oil rents was reinvested in infrastructure development, thereby generating a rapid development of the construction sector and its ancillary economic activities. The article explains the origins of segmentation among infrastructure contractors and the central role of oil-backed finance, particularly from China, during the boom and the crisis. It demonstrates the political imperatives of fast delivery of infrastructure assets for the maintenance of the dominant political settlement and the distribution of organisational power in Angola, which led to the rise of a well-organised element of state-linked Angolan capital in this lucrative sector. These experiences reflect the centrality of market segmentation and state–business relations in the evolution of the infrastructure sector in Angola, and the implications for the rise and consolidation of domestic capitalist interests.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernandes Wanda & Carlos Oya & Borja Monreal, 2023. "Building Angola: A Political Economy of Infrastructure Contractors in Post-War Angola," Journal of Southern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 25-47, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:49:y:2023:i:1:p:25-47
    DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2023.2192589
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2023.2192589
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03057070.2023.2192589?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christina Wolf, 2024. "Construction as a Springboard for Industrialisation: Chinese Overseas Construction Projects and Structural Transformation in Angola, Ethiopia and Nigeria," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(3), pages 639-667, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:49:y:2023:i:1:p:25-47. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cjss .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.