Beyond the gatekeeper state: African infrastructure hubs as sites of experimentation

Abstract

While Africa has often been portrayed as peripheral to major global economic flows, the copper mines in the South of the DRC as the port of Dar es Salaam are hubs of extraction and trade at the heart of the global economy. This article departs from the notion of the gatekeeper state, which describes the creation of islands of effective state territoriality around such gates in the colonial encounter, producing postcolonial states that essentially only control enclaves and corridors in their territory. These form the basis for an outward, extraction-oriented political economy. The article proposes a reconceptualisation of gatekeeping as a set of practices performed by a range of actors, including (but not limited to) governments. I argue that this brings into view how the political geography of gates is being transformed by a multitude of actors including from the Global South. It is also shaped by powerful transnational technical systems and logistics. Empirically, this will be...