Introduction
In 2017, President John Magufuli’s administration instituted laws establishing a redefined resource nationalist regime for the management of the country’s extractive resources. Although given a populist twist, resource nationalist measures introduced in 2017 were neither new nor unique to Tanzania (Jacob and Pedersen 2018). First, the measures built on previous waves of nationalist policies adopted by Tanzania in the past, notably during President Julius Nyerere’s socialist development strategy (1960s–1980s) and recently under President Jakaya Kikwete’s administration (2005–2015). Second, President Magufuli’s resource nationalist measures are part of the broader trend towards a tougher resource nationalist governance strategy that is observed throughout the world (Bucheli and Aguilera 2010; Wilson 2015; Kaup and Gellert 2017).
Resource nationalism has arisen mainly as a backlash against the failed promise of extractivist development that was embedded in neoliberal development strategy (Chiasson-LeBel 2016; Hope 2016; Andreucci 2017). The main thrust of resource nationalism is to revitalise and refocus the resource extraction–development debate on making resource extraction benefit local and national communities in countries that host large extractivist projects. Consequently, a range of measures including local content requirements, increased taxation, and direct state and public participation in resource extraction are deployed to make resource extraction deliver to local and national development (Wilson 2011, 2015; Ovadia 2016a, 2016b; Andrews and Nwapi 2018). But does resource nationalism necessarily achieve what resource liberalism has all along failed to live up to? Whereas resource liberalism promotes a resource governance strategy that favours openness to international capital and technology and export-oriented resource industries, resource nationalism seeks to promote a state developmentalist approach in which the state wields more discretionary power over resource industries (Wilson 2011).
Although resource nationalism may have arisen from the failure of resource liberalism, its adoption and implementation hardly correct the errors of liberalised resource governance. It has been shown that far from undoing resource liberalism, resource nationalism has actually relegitimised and reproduced aspects of neoliberal resource governance, with the state playing a major role in regulating and directing resource extraction (Riofrancos 2017; Bebbington et al. 2018; Koch and Perreault 2018; Vela-Almeida 2018; Krommes-Ravnsmed 2019). Furthermore, resource nationalism has become a government tool to silence regional and local claims over resource extraction and benefit sharing (Bebbington 2012; Silva, Akchurin, and Bebbington 2018).
In some instances, as recent developments in Tanzania show, resource nationalism can provide avenues through which the powerless can influence and shape extractive resource policy decisions. Since coming to power in 2015, President Magufuli’s administration has taken several measures which can, at least rhetorically, be said to provide opportunities to the public to have a say over the management of natural resources. While this may be the case, there has been limited critical academic analysis of the linkages between resource nationalism and community participation in resource decision-making processes. A few studies on resource nationalism in Tanzania examine it as a strategy to garner political support (Jacob and Pedersen 2018; Poncian 2019c); question whether it represents a break from past resource nationalist measures (Jacob and Pedersen 2018); and consider its practice and implications (Kinyondo and Huggins 2019).
This paper interrogates recent resource nationalist measures considering whether and how they enable or hinder community participation in resource decision-making and governance processes. The paper asks one fundamental question: does resource nationalism make a difference in the practice of community participation in resource governance? ‘Community’ is a highly contested concept, given that communities are rarely homogeneous social units. Communities may share a common geographical location but still be differentiated into distinct subunits and classes based on how each community member links up with the broader national and international political economy (Bernstein 2010). Community is variously defined in terms of such descriptors as local community, indigenous people and rural communities, and are often internally non-homogeneous because of class dynamics (Greco 2015). Because of this, it has been argued that there may not be such a thing as local communities, as this tends to attract varied meanings, for example constructed meanings of autochthony and localness (Daley 2005). This makes defining what or who constitutes a community challenging.
This notwithstanding, the paper uses the term ‘community’ to refer to a group of people directly affected by the mining activities and who organise themselves in a united front, to confront the state. Throughout the paper, the concept is applied as a generalist label that includes diversified groups: artisanal and small-scale miners, local residents engaging in farming and fishing, and local political elites riding on popular dissatisfaction with resource extraction to push for protests. Community engagement is used to describe processes by which extractive project proponents and affected groups of people develop and sustain their relationship throughout the project lifespan (Deng 2012). The paper argues that, while framed as a measure to empower the poor to benefit from resource extraction, resource nationalism does little to empower communities and the public to shape and determine resource policy decisions.
In presenting this argument, I draw on three case studies of community resistance and negotiation, that each represent a different political period of resource governance in Tanzania. The first case – North Mara Gold Mine – represents the neoliberalisation era, providing the contrast within which subsequent resource nationalist cases are analysed. This case is one of the most contentious large-scale gold mines in the country, which has been at the centre of frequent conflicts with surrounding communities (Makene, Emel, and Murphy 2012). How the artisanal and small-scale miners resisted the takeover of the site by a large mining company and how the state responded provide a lens through which to understand subsequent state response to similar resistances in a resource nationalist context. The second and third cases represent, respectively, two waves of resource nationalism. The second case is the Mtwara popular protest against the construction of a natural gas transmission pipeline to Dar es Salaam, representing the second wave of resource nationalism, under Kikwete’s administration of 2005–2015, and symbolising the use of force on the part of the government to suppress community resistance to extractivist projects, shared with the neoliberal era. The third wave, under Magufuli’s administration of 2015–2021, is exemplified by Magufuli’s handling of artisanal and small-scale miners. In all three cases, I endeavour to establish whether resource nationalism has meaningfully changed the way government responds to and seeks to promote community engagement in resource governance.
International capital, the state and community rights
Samir Amin once remarked that international capital knows no borders; it only strives to generate more surplus value by emigrating to the periphery as a means of raising the profit rate (Amin 1977, 221). While capital would still behave in much the same way between rich and poor countries, when it ‘emigrates’ to resource-rich poor countries such as those in Africa and Latin America, its profit maximisation behaviour becomes so intense that poor countries may end up losing more than they gain (Amin 1977; Bush 2007). But for this to happen, capital has to forge authoritarian and exploitative relations with the state in those countries that heavily rely on foreign direct investment (FDI) for economic development. It is this relationship that often defines the nature and character of capital–state–community relations in poor countries.
Several studies have shown that the relationship between international capital and the state often produces exploitation and oppression, with the state siding with capital to suppress and/or marginalise communities (Bush 2007, 2008; Obi and Rustad 2011; Obi 2018). Even where organised social movements and popular protests have threatened capital interests so as to result in some reforms, this has hardly changed how international capital interests work with the state to define how communities, citizens and the general public relate to their state and benefit from FDI projects in their countries (Bush 2008). This is more pronounced in the extractives sector, where international capital has come into close contact with indigenous groups and communities in remote rural areas (O’Faircheallaigh 2013, 20). The fact that international capital only strikes deals with the state, often behind closed doors, makes it harder for local community rights such as fair compensation and participation in decision-making to be respected. Further, that local communities seldom have influence on national politics and policy choices means that they are always likely to be at the receiving end of the impact of resource extraction (Okeke-Uzodike et al. 2014).
To understand how state–capital relations play out against poor rural communities where large extractive projects are mostly located, one needs to take a critical look at the international governance system and the political power of multinational corporations. Critical political economy scholars have long shown that the international economic system is skewed in favour of international capital (Mkandawire 2005; Sakbani 2005; Hearson 2018). The structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s and 1990s are one example of how the global system as governed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) functions in favour of international capital, often at the expense of the less developed nation states. Structural adjustment programmes turned out to be avenues for international capital interests to find unrestricted inroads into developing countries’ economies (Amin 1992; Mkandawire and Soludo 1998). Although the resulting FDI inflows have arguably led to satisfactory economic growth, this has come at the expense of the livelihoods and dignity of remote rural communities, and government capacity (Campbell 2008; Okeke-Uzodike et al. 2014). This has equally resulted in multinational corporations garnering greater political influence in developing countries, in their mother countries and in international governance institutions (Babic, Fichtner, and Heemskerk 2017; Mikler 2018; Kim and Milner 2019).
On top of the role of international governance institutions, it is also important to note that home governments of multinational corporations have played a significant role in defining state–corporate relations. Through bilateral and diplomatic relations between developing countries and the Western countries, international capital has managed to wield enormous political influence, thus shaping how business deals are determined in developing countries (Mikler 2018).
But what do all these mean when it comes to government–local community relations against the backdrop of strong international capital interests in resource extraction? Resource extraction companies come into direct contact with rural communities at the exploration and extraction levels. It is at these levels that decisions made between the state and multinational corporations, often without community representation and/or participation, manifest. At the national level where decisions to grant exploration and extraction rights are made, the justification is usually that of economic development opportunities such as taxes, levies, employment opportunities and procurement of goods and services that multinational corporations promise to deliver to resource-rich countries (World Bank 1992; Bush 2007; Mkapa 2010).
These same potential benefits are often used by the state to justify community land dispossession and displacement to give way to large extractivist projects. In marketing and defending capital interests in the name of national and community benefits, states drift away from becoming the custodians of their people’s livelihoods to becoming the defenders of international capital interests. Consequently, the interests and rights of communities are subsumed by the state–capital relations. Such is the case not because communities are powerless and can easily be dealt with, but because capital cannot flourish without state backing (Tansel 2017; Bruff and Tansel 2018). This is especially important as state–corporate relations can hardly be in the interest of the communities and other marginalised groups, a fact that is made obvious by the countless subaltern resistances against corporate plunder and confiscation of land and related resources in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Ferguson 2006; Bebbington et al. 2008; Obi and Rustad 2011; Bebbington 2012; Arsel 2013).
Indeed, the widespread conflicts between miners and communities as well as between large- and small-scale miners point to the problematic nature of state–capital relations and the inadequacy of authoritarianism in silencing dissenting voices. In Latin America, subaltern struggles against corporate plunder have often contributed to the overthrowing of capital-lenient governments (Nem Singh 2014). At the global level, such struggles and endless resource conflicts have resulted in the adoption of various initiatives such as Publish What You Pay, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Free, Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), corporate social responsibility and social licence to operate. However, these initiatives have largely failed to alter state–capital relations and their implications for the plight of communities affected by large extractive projects (Geenen and Verweijen 2017; Sinclair 2018). Where national governments have felt threatened by increased popular protests and disapproval of state–corporate relations, they have devised measures to try to stave off opposition and relegitimise extraction. Such measures have to a great extent involved one or more varieties of what the literature describes as resource nationalism. But does resource nationalism really alter state–capital relations in favour of community empowerment and engagement? The following sections will explore this question further, through a periodisation of Tanzania’s resource nationalism, before turning to the analysis of three cases.
Resource nationalism and the promise of empowerment
Resource nationalism has become a dominant narrative in popular and academic analyses of extractive resource governance across the world (Wilson 2015). Although very commonly applied to resource policy measures that have an imagined anti-liberal flavour, resource nationalism is a concept that defies universal clarity (Kaup and Gellert 2017; Koch and Perreault 2018). In its common application, resource nationalism denotes
a state-directed and mercantilistic approach to the management of natural resources … where a natural-resource endowed country uses its legal jurisdiction over these resources to achieve some set of national development goals that would otherwise not obtain if their exploitation were left to international market processes. (Wilson 2011, 285)
Resource nationalism may include specific local-content policies on employment and training, procurement of goods and services, direct state and public participation in resource extraction, and so forth (Andreasson 2015). It may also exist in four varieties, namely revolutionary resource nationalism, economic resource nationalism, legacy resource nationalism and soft resource nationalism (Andreasson 2015). Further, resource nationalism is also deployed to achieve some political goals (Wilson 2015). For example, recent studies of Tanzania’s resource nationalist measures show that President Magufuli’s administration deployed resource nationalism to galvanise political support in light of increasingly competitive elections (Jacob and Pedersen 2018; Poncian 2019c). In Latin America, several studies have equally shown that the framing of resource nationalism, or neo-extractivism, on anti-foreign ownership has had much to do with seeking to win popular political support from the subaltern without necessarily reforming resource extraction politics (Andreucci and Radhuber 2017; Riofrancos 2017; Krommes-Ravnsmed 2019).
The assumptions and goals of resource nationalism point to an imagination that it presents an opportunity to empower the nationals and communities to benefit from the extraction of resources. Such variants of resource nationalism as revolutionary and economic resource nationalism suggest that the intention is to empower the local communities and nationals of resource-rich countries such that they benefit and have a voice in the management of their natural resources. In Bolivia, for example, President Evo Morales campaigned on the banner of nationalisation of hydrocarbons, which was at the time a popular slogan of the social movements that had engulfed the country during the early to mid 2000s (Andreucci 2017; Andreucci and Radhuber 2017; Krommes-Ravnsmed 2019). The rhetorical intention was to do away with classical extractivism, which had privileged the international corporations at the expense of peasants and the rest of the Bolivian subaltern (Krommes-Ravnsmed 2019). This would be replaced with a more progressive neo-extractivism in which indigenous groups and communities of Bolivia would be empowered to have a voice and benefit from the extraction of the country’s hydrocarbon resources (Perreault 2012). However, the promises of progressive neo-extractivism to empower indigenous groups against state-sponsored expropriations and the practice of neoliberal resource extraction became purely rhetorical as soon as President Morales assumed office (Andreucci 2017; Andreucci and Radhuber 2017; Gudynas 2019; Krommes-Ravnsmed 2019).
Even where such policies have sought to transform economies from resource dependence to knowledge-based economies through import substitution industrialisation, this has rarely challenged the structures that reproduce dependence on natural resources (Purcell, Fernandez, and Martinez 2017). For Tanzania, which aspires to leverage its mineral and natural gas resources in order to spur industrialisation, this says much about the role that resource nationalism can play in reproducing structures of uneven and unequal development.
While early studies of resource nationalism in Tanzania have already shown the hindering of community rights over resources throughout the early 2000s (Pedersen and Jacob 2017; Ahearne and Childs 2018), what I will call the ‘the third wave’ of resource nationalism – after President Magufuli assumed office in 2015 – remains less explored. In the following section, Tanzanian resource nationalism is periodised, to then be analysed against the Latin American experience.
Three waves of resource nationalism and public participation in Tanzania
The first wave of resource nationalism
Since independence, Tanzania has gone through three waves of resource nationalism. The first wave of resource nationalism began during the late 1960s following Tanzania’s adoption of a socialist development ideology in 1967, which defined natural resources as part of the major means of production whose ownership was to be placed under the public through the state (Nyerere 1968). The Arusha Declaration stated categorically that ‘all citizens together possess all the natural resources of the country in trust for their descendants’ and that ‘[t]he way to build and maintain socialism is to ensure that the major means of production are under the control and ownership of the Peasants and the Workers themselves through their Government and their Cooperatives’ (TANU 1967, 1, 3).
In this dispensation, resource nationalism was broadly defined in terms of public and collective ownership of resources, and active and direct state participation in resource extraction through its flagship state enterprises (the State Mining Corporation – STAMICO; the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation – TPDC; and the National Development Corporation – NDC). Even though all these broader measures were taken, the main emphasis during this period as regards resource extraction was that minerals would be better left in the soil until such time as national capacity was ready to use them domestically, instead of having them exploited by imperialists (Chachage 2010). This understanding is what distinguishes the first wave from subsequent resource liberalist and nationalist reforms of the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s.
The neoliberal era
Between the first and second waves of resource nationalism, Tanzania adopted neoliberal policies of economic, social and political liberalisation. This period, spanning from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s, interrupted resource nationalist policies in the country. As the economic crisis of the 1980s hit Tanzania, the country’s development politics had to be rethought. As the economy declined and the public sector could not withstand the pressure, many people turned to unregulated and ‘illegal’ artisanal mining, which proved to be a major employer and main mineral producer during the 1980s (Society for International Development 2009). However, as home-grown structural adjustment failed to rescue the economy, Tanzania had few to no alternatives other than subscribing to the neoliberal reform package from the late 1980s (Wobst 2001). From the early 1990s, the extractive resources were liberalised in order to attract large-scale FDI inflows into the mining sector in line with the policy prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF (World Bank 1992). A market-based economy replaced a centralised economy, and state control and ownership of natural resources were replaced with private ownership and control of resources. This governance regime prioritised the establishment of a conducive investment climate to attract FDI, as well as the implementation of policy, legal and regulatory frameworks that would prioritise and/or protect the interests of private foreign investors (Lissu 2001; Curtis and Lissu 2008; Curtis 2012). This generated a public outcry that created conditions for the return of resource nationalism, as shown below.
The second wave of resource nationalism
The second wave of resource nationalism began around the mid 2000s during President Jakaya Kikwete’s administration (2005–2015). Kikwete’s administration immediately started taking measures to relegitimise resource extraction (Jacob and Pedersen 2018). Some examples of measures taken include the government’s resolve to engage foreign large-scale miners in renegotiating some fiscal provisions and local content requirements in 2006 (Fisher 2008), and commissioning a presidential inquiry into the mining sector to advise the government on necessary policy and legal reforms. A major outcome of the presidential commission was the introduction of resource nationalist policy and legal reforms in 2009 and 2010, respectively (Jacob and Pedersen 2018). Further resource nationalist measures were embodied in the subsequent energy sector policy and legal reforms undertaken during the 2010–2015 period and enshrined further in the broader development policy including the Five-Year Development Plan (2011/12–2015/16) and the Long-Term Perspective Plan (2011/12–2025/26). In all these measures, emphasis was placed on fostering a resource-based industrialisation strategy by promoting mineral value addition, employment and training of locals, local procurement of goods and services, direct state and public participation in resource extraction, and other local content requirements (Lange and Kinyondo 2016; Ovadia 2016a; Kinyondo and Villanger 2017; Jacob and Pedersen 2018).
For community participation, resource nationalist measures taken during the 2005–2015 period included the recognition of community and/or public participation in the extractive resource policy and legal framework. The Mining Policy, the Tanzania Natural Gas Policy, the Tanzania Extractive Industries (Transparency and Accountability) Act 2015 and the Oil and Gas Revenue Management Act provide avenues for public and community participation in resource governance. However, as the cases analysed below show, legislating for community participation does not necessarily translate into actual participation on the ground (Poncian and Jose 2019a, 2019b).
The third wave of resource nationalism
Building on the second wave and drawing inspiration from the first wave, the third wave of resource nationalism can be said to have started in 2015. Once President Magufuli assumed office in 2015, his administration took drastic resource nationalist measures in what seems to be an attempt to leverage the country’s vast resource endowment to spur industrialisation and broader economic transformation (Jacob and Pedersen 2018; Jacob 2019). Measures taken since 2015 include a mineral concentrate export ban; revoking large-scale prospecting licences and reallocating sites to artisanal and small-scale miners; and enacting several laws and regulations including the Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, the Natural Wealth and Resources Contracts (Review and Re-Negotiation of Unconscionable Terms) Act, 2017, the Natural Wealth and Resources (Permanent Sovereignty) Act, 2017, the petroleum local content regulations, 2017 and the Mining (Local Content) Regulations, 2018 (United Republic of Tanzania 2017b, 2018; Jacob 2018; Kinyondo and Huggins 2019).
Together, these resource nationalist measures represent government’s resolve to bank on resource wealth to put Tanzania on a path to socio-economic transformation by spurring a resource-based industrialisation strategy (United Republic of Tanzania 2016a, 2016b). The 2017 laws provide for public ownership and sovereignty over extractive resources (United Republic of Tanzania 2017a). Building on the first wave of resource nationalism spearheaded by Nyerere, these resource nationalist laws commit the state to a people-centred natural resources governance.
In terms of popular participation in decision-making, the laws make significant provisions for contract disclosure and for the national assembly to play a critical role in contract negotiation and renegotiation. The Natural Wealth and Resources Contracts (Review and Renegotiation of Unconscionable Terms) Act (2017) empowers the national assembly to review resource arrangements or agreements and advise the government accordingly for renegotiation of terms.1 These legal measures providing for broader community and public participation in resource governance through their elected representatives represent not only greater government commitment to participatory resource governance but also a departure from earlier governance arrangements in which resource contracts and negotiations were beyond public scrutiny. Such measures also show that resource nationalism can be a powerful tool in ensuring that the public can influence and shape resource policy decisions and choices.
Whereas recent resource nationalist reforms suggest Tanzania may be heading towards more participatory resource governance, studies have shown that the practice has been devoid of actual participation of communities and citizens (Lal 2015; Ahearne and Childs 2018; Must 2018). It has been shown that the government has consistently sought to silence community demands and claims over extractive resources and their policy decisions (Maganga and Jacob 2016; Jacob 2018; Poncian and Jose 2019b; Poncian 2019d). Resource nationalism has consistently been deployed by the government to reassert national ownership of resources and has scapegoated communities who asked for more participation, portraying them as pursuing self-interest against national development interest (Pedersen and Jacob 2017; Ahearne and Childs 2018; Poncian 2019a). The failure of the first and second waves of resource nationalism to promote vibrant community participation in resource governance raises critical questions about the potential of resource nationalism to address the power and influence of international capital on the state and to empower communities to participate in resource governance. My argument converges with Chachage’s assessment that resource nationalism does not challenge the structures that promote uneven and unequal extractive activities but can instead either promote ‘accumulation from above’, where the state partners with capital to drive a mining agenda that privileges capital, or ‘accumulation from below’, where state efforts to empower local producers can be diverted by local powerful ‘petty bourgeoisies’ and governmental officials for their personal interests (Chachage 1993). The following section draws on three case studies, one for each of the three waves of resource nationalism, to determine whether resource nationalism can be said to have changed the way government responds to and seeks to promote community engagement in resource governance.
Resource nationalism: three contrasting cases
The North Mara case: the neoliberal era
The North Mara Gold Mine, owned by Barrick Gold Corporation, has been the most violent and contentious mine in Tanzania since it was opened in 2002 (Poncian and Kigodi 2015), and has thus been chosen to exemplify the neoliberalisation period. This gold mine has recorded the highest number of confrontations between the mine and the surrounding communities. Prior to granting the mine to a Canadian company in 1996, North Mara used to be owned and operated by artisanal and small-scale miners who had occupied it long before, in 1987. In 1991, the five villages surrounding what is now the North Mara Gold Mine were granted claim titles over the area, providing them with legal rights to mine gold in the area (Lange 2008). These claims were, however, overturned as in 1996 the government granted licence to East Africa Gold Mining Ltd (EAGL), a subsidiary of the Canadian multinational mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation. Granting access to a Canadian corporation disregarded the claims to the gold mine laid by the residents and workers of the five villages around the mines, who carried out small-scale artisanal mining and derived considerable livelihoods out of the gold mine. The decision aligned the Tanzanian government with the neoliberal principles, pushed by the international financial institutions (IFIs), of promoting FDI over locally driven development. This threatened the interests of a network of people from the local and national and/or central levels (i.e. village leaders, rich merchants, party leaders, etc.) who themselves engaged in informal gold mining and marketing (C.S.L. Chachage 1993). Consequently, this became a source of unending tensions between new, large miners and the villages and artisanal miners in the area. This would oblige the government to employ coercion to see to it that accumulation from above thrives. Thus, where resistance was anticipated from the villages holding claims over the area, the Tarime District government, in collaboration with the investors, put undue pressure on villagers to accept low compensation and threatened to arrest all those who did not comply (Lange 2008). One year before the official opening of the mine, the state coercive apparatus were deployed to forcefully evict the villagers and small-scale miners whom it victimised as troublemakers (LEAT 2003).
The forceful eviction of artisanal and small-scale miners in North Mara and the suppression of their resistance underscore the very argument that, since colonial times, capital has thrived on its relationship with the state, where the state has to deploy its coercive apparatus to defend capital interests whenever they seem to be threatened (Mamdani 1996). It should be noted that the villagers’ resolve to seek redress in the court of law did not make matters better. The eviction took place when a formal complaint had already been lodged with the Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance.2 Although the commission issued an interim injunction ordering the company and government to refrain from doing any act in the disputed area until the final determination of the complaint (Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance 2003), the government went ahead in evicting villagers and artisanal miners. The government also resorted to threatening the villagers, the general public, the critical media who investigated and reported on the sector’s opaqueness and corruption, and the lawyers who represented the villagers in court (Curtis and Lissu 2008). These all faced charges of sedition. Unfortunately, this has become a common practice across Africa where foreign-capital-owned large mines are located. In Ghana, for instance, the state used the same tactics to silence riots against a Chinese mining company, Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited (SMGHL), in 2012 (Crawford, Agyeyomah, and Mba 2017).
Thus, it can be argued that state–capital relations are clearly essential for capital to thrive in areas where resistance would otherwise endanger its pursuit. In this context, liberalisation of the mining sector provides a cover under which the state uses authoritarianism to comply with IFI directives to support FDI, and those in turn work in favour of multinational corporations from the global North. Class dynamics at national and international levels are vital here. The state defends the interests of mining capital, and state officials benefit from this through corrupt deals and rent extraction; this class alliance is defended through the state apparatus. The local communities, including artisanal and small-scale miners, lose out in the struggle, and have little hope of getting redress through the legal system, because executive powers systematically intervene in the judiciary processes handling legal cases pertaining to the mining sector. To conclude, the Mara case shows that in the neoliberal era, the state recurred to executive powers’ interference into legal disputes in the mining sector and deployed an excessive use of force to repress popular protests against contentious mining deals.
The Mtwara case: second-wave resource nationalism
The Mtwara case exemplifies the contradictory linkages between resource nationalism and community empowerment and engagement that characterised the second wave of resource nationalism. The discovery of substantial reserves of offshore natural gas in Mtwara – one of the historically disadvantaged southern regions – ignited hopes and greater expectations among the people of Mtwara that natural gas would move Mtwara from its historical development marginalisation to greater socio-economic transformation (Lal 2015; Must 2018; Poncian 2019b). These hopes and expectations were built on senior government officials’ pronouncements suggesting that natural gas extraction would make Mtwara the ‘Dubai’ of Tanzania (Stølan et al. 2017; Must and Rustad 2019), ‘be like Europe’ (Must and Rustad 2019) or become the hub for natural gas processing (Poncian 2019b).
The implications of these pronouncements were that the expectations of the people of Mtwara were raised to unrealistic levels. When the government announced its decision to lay a pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam, a series of violent protests sprang up in Mtwara from December 2012 through to May 2013 in opposition to the government decision (Poncian 2019b). A combination of historical grievances, due to perceived long-standing marginalisation of Mtwara region vis-à-vis the rest of the country, part of the post-independence neglect of the southern regions’ infrastructural and productive development, produced a sentiment among the people of Mtwara that the government was denying the region yet another development opportunity (Lal 2015; Must 2018; Must and Rustad 2019; Poncian 2019b). The decision by the government to pipe gas to Dar es Salaam was added to a long list of the various development opportunities that the people of Mtwara believed were diverted to benefit ‘northern’3 regions (Raia Mwema 2013).
These protests were a manifestation of the desire by the people to push for their voices to be heard, respected and incorporated in national decisions about natural gas development. The insensitivity of the regional administration and of the national government to local demands pushed Mtwara residents to organise demonstrations, including violent protest, to seek government attention.
The timing of the Mtwara protests is significant, as they took place within the second wave of resource nationalism, at a time when the government had made policy and legal commitments to promote public participation in mineral resource governance. Although natural gas policy had not been formulated yet, mineral resource policy and laws were suggestive of a government that was moving towards more public participation in extractive resource governance, as testified by the reform of natural gas and energy policies and laws that came into force in 2013 and 2015 (United Republic of Tanzania 2013b, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d).
Nonetheless, policy commitments for public participation in resource governance processes associated with the second wave of resource nationalism did not offer any real opportunity for bottom-up, popular public participation. The reforms of this second-wave resource nationalism narrowed down the meaning of public participation to public economic participation in the natural gas value chain. When the people of Mtwara pushed further, to go beyond the boundaries of economic participation, the state deployed resource nationalism to suppress the protests, dubbing the protestors selfish, secessionist and going against the interests of national development (Ahearne and Childs 2018; Poncian 2019b). Further, economic participation does not mean that communities in Mtwara are automatically beneficiaries. The local content policy targets the national level, with little regard for the interests of local communities impacted by the extraction and no provision for rural development or local community participation. In this context, local content policies become an avenue for urban-based elites to take advantage of the local content opportunities, thus reproducing patterns of rural marginalisation (HakiRasilimali 2019).
Crucially, popular protests against government plans to pipe gas to Dar es Salaam and subsequent government use of coercive apparatus to suppress them should be understood within the national political economy set-up as well as the potential of natural gas to link Tanzania to the global energy markets and international capital. Competition for foreign investors and access to global oil and gas markets from other oil- and gas-rich countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Angola, Nigeria and Mozambique pressures the government to hasten decision-making processes so as not to lose out on FDI (United Republic of Tanzania 2013a; Amanam 2017).
This context suggests that resource nationalism cannot guarantee empowered and meaningful community engagement in decision-making and governance processes. The drive to attract international capital and access to global energy markets cannot co-exist with meaningful community engagement. This explains why the government used its police and army forces to suppress the people of Mtwara when they protested against its plans to pipe natural gas to Dar es Salaam, a plan that would potentially link Tanzania’s natural gas to international liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets in Asia and elsewhere (United Republic of Tanzania 2016b). The prioritisation of investment attraction greatly challenges the practice of community and citizen engagement by making engagement simply an act to ‘legitimise investments and policy decisions’ (Merino 2018, 82).
The Mtwara case further underscores the consequence of state–capital relations. As noted above in the section on international capital, the state and community rights, capital thrives on state deployment of coercive apparatus to promote capital interests in the name of national interest. In that way, the state tramples on citizen and community rights. Just like police suppression of community protests against mining in Latin America (Bebbington et al. 2008; Arsel 2013; Walter 2014; Taylor and Bonner 2017), the Tanzanian government deployed the police and the military in Mtwara to protect capital interests and safeguard an extractivist project.
A new role for artisanal and small-scale mining: third-wave resource nationalism
In the neoliberal era, artisanal and small-scale miners have suffered from an active suppression, marginalisation and criminalisation by the state and mining capital (Chachage 1993, 1995; Fisher 2008; Crawford and Botchwey 2017; Crawford, Agyeyomah, and Mba 2017; Mutagwaba et al. 2018). In contrast to large-scale mining, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has created, to date, more employment opportunities and linkages with the local economy (Mutagwaba et al. 2018) – an element that has been recognised by the third wave of resource nationalism. But does this really empower ASM and address its key challenges?
The third wave of resource nationalism has manifested through a series of measures taken by President Magufuli’s administration to position the ASM sector, at least rhetorically, as a pro-poor sector. In December 2016, President Magufuli instructed the vice president to rescind a large-scale mining licence and reallocate the mining concession to over 5000 artisanal miners (Jacob and Pedersen 2018; Kinyondo and Huggins 2019). President Magufuli reportedly wondered how over 15,000 miners could be evicted in favour of one large-scale miner (Business & Human Rights Resource Centre 2017). Other measures include building a 24-kilometre-long wall around the Mererani tanzanite mine, the building of mineral trading centres across the country and the establishment of mining centres of excellence (Huggins and Kinyondo 2019; Kinyondo and Huggins 2019; Kinyondo and Huggins 2020). Taken together, these measures addressed the informality of ASM, mineral smuggling and technical capacity issues, and sought to increase revenues from ASM (Huggins and Kinyondo 2019; Kinyondo and Huggins 2020).
The government has also been organising recurring official meetings with ASM and other mining stakeholders, respectively in January 2019, January 2020 and early 2021 (HakiRasilimali 2019; Malanga 2021). While officiating over the 2019 meeting, President Magufuli urged the mining stakeholders in attendance to give out their concerns: ‘I’ve come here today to listen to the views and challenges of mining stakeholders … I don’t want to listen to a speech from the Ministry of Minerals … I want to hear from you – mining stakeholders – and I want you to speak openly’ (quoted in Financial Times 2019). One important outcome of this meeting was that President Magufuli announced the government would review the mining fiscal framework in response to concerns from artisanal miners and other stakeholders who raised the issue at the meeting (Gerald 2019).
These measures appear to suggest that resource nationalism can arguably be an enabler of community and public participation in resource governance. However, considered within the broader context of development politics in Tanzania, recent resource nationalist measures leave more to be desired in terms of how they can promote meaningful community participation and a vibrant ASM sector.
First, looking at measures that bring together mining stakeholders, and especially those from the ASM sector to discuss challenges facing the sector, one can reasonably argue that populist resource nationalism is already creating opportunities for ASM community members to participate in shaping extractive policy and governance. While this may be the case, the fact that such meetings normally take place after policies and laws are made means that there are limited opportunities for ASM stakeholders to meaningfully participate in shaping extractive resource policies. These measures are generally not intended to promote active community engagement but rather to support government measures and/or iron out implementation issues. Meaningful community engagement can be said to have taken place when ASM stakeholders and other mining stakeholders are engaged in decision-making and governance processes from the beginning of the projects/process through to the end (Poncian 2019b; Melyoki and Kessy 2020). Meetings with ASM stakeholders started in 2019, two years after the third-wave resource nationalist laws were passed under a certificate of urgency without meaningfully engaging ASM and other mining stakeholders. As in Bolivia, where mining cooperatives are used by the government to promote its mining interests and defray opposition to extractivist policies (Marston and Perreault 2017), meetings with ASM sector stakeholders appear to be motivated more by the need to galvanise political support from ASM to government’s resource nationalist measures.
Second, measures to address ASM issues do not appear to be motivated by the need to empower artisanal miners; rather, they are largely focused on formalisation for taxation purposes. Studies on resource nationalism and ASM in Tanzania have consistently shown that government intentions for the ASM sector are not to promote a vibrant sector and address the key challenges affecting ASM stakeholders but to formalise the sector for taxation purposes (Huggins and Kinyondo 2019; Kinyondo and Huggins 2019; Kinyondo and Huggins 2020). This is consistent with broader reforms in the rest of the extractive sector which mainly seek to secure more economic benefits from resource extraction rather than to transform the power dynamics to promote a more participatory governance of resource extraction. Just as neo-extractivism has succeeded in reproducing rentier politics (Purcell, Fernandez, and Martinez 2017; Greco 2020), President Magufuli’s resource nationalist reforms in the ASM sector do not challenge the structures that have made the sector marginal and informal. The reforms appear to be targeting small-scale miners who are formally and legally recognised; they do not, however, address the artisanal miners who do not hold claim titles. These artisanal miners continue to be excluded. While these reforms appear to be favourable to small-scale mining, they do not go further to promote an ASM sector that can graduate into a medium- and, later, large-scale mining sector.
The ASM case shows that, far from replacing an FDI-based large-scale neoliberal extractive economy, third-wave resource nationalism positions the ASM sector alongside the large-scale mining sector for increasing fiscal benefits. Neither do government measures to promote ASM seek to address exploitation, marginalisation and peripherisation of artisanal mining. They are, rather, measures aimed at recapitulating the sector for taxation purposes and for political legitimisation of government policies.
Conclusions
This paper sought to contribute to ongoing debates on resource nationalism by examining whether resource nationalism can be an alternative to the resource liberalism that has dominated Africa’s extractive politics during the past three decades. The paper did so by considering the linkages between resource nationalism and community engagement in resource governance to determine whether resource nationalism challenges the authoritarian nature of resource liberalism to make resource extraction participatory.
The paper has shown that although the second and third waves of resource nationalism provide opportunities for state participation and increase oversight, they do not appear to present a challenge to authoritarian resource liberalism, especially with regard to public participation in resource decision-making and governance processes. This is because both the second and third waves of resource nationalism focus more on increasing fiscal revenues for state coffers than on addressing key governance issues such as open and participatory resource governance. Even where resource nationalist laws provide for some forms of community and citizen participation, state–capital relations make it hard for this to translate into meaningful and actual engagement on ground. Where citizens and communities organise themselves to challenge extractivist policies, as the case studies have shown, the state comes in with its full coercive power to suppress them – often in defence of international capital. Where some forms of public consultation are implemented, as in the case of President Magufuli’s meetings with artisanal and small-scale miners, these are meant not to empower but rather to co-opt the public into supporting rentier extractivist policies (Marston and Perreault 2017). Thus, resource nationalism reproduces marginalisation and suppression. It keeps extractive politics more at the national level, with local-level needs and aspirations suppressed under the ‘national interest’ mantra. This very much stems from close relations between the state and extractive corporations, producing partnerships and joint ventures that reproduce marginalisation and exploitation akin to resource liberalism.
Whereas resource nationalism promises empowerment and emancipation, the case of Tanzania shows that, much like new extractivism in Latin America, it does not challenge the structures that reproduce exploitation and marginalisation. By focusing rather on extracting more rents from resource extraction, resource nationalism further reproduces dependence on primary commodity production, making it harder for structural transformation to take place. As such, the resource nationalist rhetoric of national sovereignty over resources does not translate into a real challenge to resource liberalism, because continued dependence on resource rents for development financing and foreign investment makes it harder for resource-dependent countries like Tanzania to be assertive. Importantly, Tanzania’s government marginalisation and suppression of critical voices against resource nationalism reflect a general trend characteristic of new extractivism in Latin America (Andreucci and Radhuber 2017), thus implying that far from engendering empowerment and emancipation, resource nationalism thrives on authoritarianism to reproduce oppressive and exploitative resource politics, with the state playing a key role.