This book is a pacesetter in matters of mining and the environment in Africa from multidisciplinary and spatio-temporal perspectives. The book approaches mining from the perspectives of law, politics, archaeology, anthropology, African studies, geography, human ecology, sociology, history, economics and development. It interrogates mining and environment from the perspectives of customary law as well as from the perspectives of Euro-modern laws. In this sense, the book straddles precolonial, colonial and postcolonial mining and environmental perspectives. In all this, it maintains a Pan-Africanist perspective that also speaks to contemporary debates on African Renaissance and to the unity of Africa. From scrutinising the lived realities of African miners who are often insensitively and unjustly addressed as illegal miners, the book also interrogates transnational mining corporations; matters of corporate social responsibility as well as matters of tax evasions by transnational corporations whose commitment to accountability to African governments is questioned. With both theoretical chapters and chapter based on empirical studies on mining and the environment across the African continent, the book provides a much needed holistic, one stop shop for scholars, activists, researchers and policy makers who need a comprehensive treatise on African mining and the environment. The book comes at the right time when matters of African mining and environment are increasingly coming to the fore in the light of discourses about the new 21st century scramble for African resources, in which big transnational corporations and nations are jostling to suck Africa dry in their race to control planetary resources. It is a book that speaks to contemporary broader issues of (de-)coloniality and transformation of African minds and African environmental resources.

Despite sustained continental and national struggles for autonomy, sovereignty and independence in postcolonial Africa, the continent is increasingly embattled by the forces of globalisation which threaten African identity that is at the core of African struggles for continental and national unity. Situating the debates in the contemporary discourses on decoloniality, global consumerism, global food apartheid and the challenges and prospects of the emergent sharing economies, this book critically examines the importation, use and implications of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other such non-food products on African bodies, institutions and cultures. The book poses questions about how Africa can be decolonised both politically and in terms of global food apartheid and the dehumanising importation and use of “foreign” non-food products, some of which militate against the ethos of [African] identity, Renaissance and indigeneity. On note, the book urges the African continent to ensure the safety of imports ensuing from the global flows and circulations that are mired in the resilient invisible global matrices of power.

One of the fundamental challenges in deconstructing, rethinking and remaking the world from a Pan African vantage point is that some captives have tended to delight in the warmth of the [imperial] predators mouth. In other words, some captives forget that the imperial predators mouth gets warm because empire is eating and heating up from prey on the continent. (De-)Militarisation, Transnational Land Grabs and Restitution in an Age of the New Scramble for Africa: A Pan African Socio-Legal Perspective is a book that knocks on key aspects relating to land, militarisation, a PostAfrican World Order and a chaotic Post-God World Order, which require critical scholarly and policy attention in the quest to free Africa from centuries-old imperial depredations. The book carefully navigates the imperial entrapments which are designed to focus African attention only on decolonising African minds without also engaging in the [imperially more unsettling] decolonisation of African materialities.

The emergent so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution is regarded by some as a panacea for bringing about development to Africans. This book dismisses this flawed reasoning. Surfacing how investors are actually looting and plundering Africa; how the industrial internet of things, the gig economies, digital economies and cryptocurrencies breach African political and economic sovereignty, the book pioneers what can be called anticipatory economics which anticipate the future of economies. It is argued that the future of Africans does not necessarily require degrowth, postgrowth, postdevelopment, postcapitalism or sharing/solidarity economies: it requires attention to age-old questions about African ownership and control of their resources. Investors have to invest in ensuring that Africans own and control their resources. Further, it is pointed out that the historical imperial structural creation of forced labour is increasingly morphing into what we call the structural creation of forced leisure which is no less lethal for Africans. Because both the structural creation of forced labour and the structural creation of forced leisure are undergirded by transnational neo-imperial plunder, theft, robbery, looting and dispossession of Africans, this book goes beyond the simplistic arguments that Euro-America developed due to the industrial revolutions.

One of the fundamental challenges in deconstructing, rethinking and remaking the world from a Pan African vantage point is that some captives have tended to delight in the warmth of the [imperial] predator’s mouth. In other words, some captives forget that the imperial predator’s mouth gets warm because empire is eating and heating up from prey on the continent. (De-)Militarisation, Transnational Land Grabs and Restitution in an Age of the New Scramble for Africa: A Pan African Socio-Legal Perspective is a book that knocks on key aspects relating to land, militarisation, a PostAfrican World Order and a chaotic Post-God World Order, which require critical scholarly and policy attention in the quest to free Africa from centuries-old imperial depredations. The book carefully navigates the imperial entrapments which are designed to focus African attention only on decolonising African minds without also engaging in the [imperially more unsettling] decolonisation of African materialities.

This book explores African domestic and regional responses and approaches to environmental protection and sustainability. Written by African experts, the collection consists of five parts covering the whole of Africa. It provides broad coverage of specific themes, including environmental constitutionalism, climate change, gender and the environment, wildlife trade, environmental justice, and human displacement. The key aims are first, to explore theoretical and empirical studies to interrogate and provide clarity on academic discourse on how and whether environmental human rights approaches and policy implications have effectively enhanced environmental protection and sustainability at African domestic levels. Second, to investigate and present innovative solutions on how African domestic legal regimes deal with environmental justice, natural resources governance, refugees’ environmental rights, and climate-induced displaced persons. Finally, to propose innovative legal and institutionalised solutions to Africa’s ecological realities by determining the legal and regulatory gaps on environmental human rights issues on the continent. The collection will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and policymakers in human rights law, environmental law, political science, ecology and conservation, environmental management, disaster management, and development studies.

Contemporary scholarly discourses about decolonising materialities are taking two noticeable trajectories, the first trajectory privileges establishing connections, relationships and associations between human beings and nature. The second trajectory privileges restoration, restitution, reparations for colonial dispossessions, lootings and disinheritance. While the first trajectory presupposes that colonialism was merely about separation, alienation, and disconnections between human beings and nature, the second trajectory stresses the colonialists dispossession, disinheritance and privations of Africans. Drawing on contemporary discourses about materialities in relation to semiotics, (non-)representationalism, rhetoric, ecocriticism, territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, translation, animism, science and technology studies, this book teases out the intellectually rutted terrain of African materialities. It argues that in a world of increasing impoverishment, the significance of materialities cannot be overemphasised: more so for the continent of Africa where impoverishment materialises in the midst of resource opulence. The book is a pacesetter in no holds barred interrogation of African materialities.