Discourses and practices of Political Risk Analysis in the gold mining industry of Eastern DRC : a PRA perspective

Abstract

Primarily this research is concerned with political risk analyses (PRA) and how it is used by multinational actors to the advantage of profit-maximisation and exploitation in Africa. Particularly the researcher considers the possibility of renarrating PRA discourses through a Chaballian perspective. The dissertation discusses conventional understandings of political risk factors such as violence and conflict, external and regional instability, institutional governance- or polyarchy and politically connected criminality (which is most popularly known in the form of corruption). Then the researcher follows Africanist, Patrick Chabal’s conceptualization of these same factors in terms of being, belonging, striving and surviving in Africa. The aim is to understand how the creation of discourses related to PRA “is problematic since it implies a particular way of ‘explaining’ that derives from a Western tradition of rationality and scientific endeavour” (Chabal, 2009: 3). Finally, the dissertation focuses on the DRC’s gold mining industry as a case study to show how hegemony is perpetuated in what we think is a post-colonial era. Here the research particularly draws on instances where various TNCs in the risk and mining industry use PRA to their advantage while the Congolese artisanal miners are denied their agency in the processes of defining political risk and, especially living with the consequences of identities circumscribed risk. The implication of this study will hopefully include alternative understandings of PRA and the realisation that conventional ways of understanding are decidedly Western, although we claim coloniality no longer influences our understanding of Africa.