The AIDC and partners invite you to the Green Extractivism Symposium, which will be held next Friday in Randburg, Johannesburg.
On our continent, many states have chosen extractivism, particularly green extractivism, as part of their economic recovery and energy transition agendas. Many foreign companies have taken advantage of weak government regulations and governance practices and poor, precarious and often unsafe working conditions to extract resources at very low cost. The profits made in the process have usually been syphoned off by corrupt officials in collusion with transnational corporations, leaving little, if anything, for the people. We, the progressive forces on the left, are called to confront this vision and push back the power of transnational corporations operating with impunity in Southern Africa and throughout the continent.
This mode of development and profit-making at any cost is not new. The symposium is thus a concerted effort to create space for robust discussion and debate, as well as to share perspectives and analyses on the coloniality of green extractivism, its manifestations, and its impacts. Because Africa is endowed with much of the world’s mineral and metal composites, particularly those required for the move away from fossil fuels production, it positions our continent at the coal face of the intensification and deeper entrenchment of extractivism to meet the need for an energy and production transition towards renewable energy sources driven by Global North states and China.
In the current geopolitical context and a new scramble for Africa, activists, scholars, trade unionists and like-minded folks need to come together to shape, build and advance a socio-ecological transformation that centres the needs of people and the planet and is based on principles of Ubuntu, liberation, justice and equality.
Programme
If you’d like to attend this event, please register by emailing Alexandria.hotz@womin.africa and/or Maxine@aidc.org.za.
