Natural Resources, Rural Poverty and China-Africa Trade: Equity and Sustainability in Informal Commodities Value Chains

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This project addresses two key development challenges and opportunities concerning Africa's natural resource governance today: the growing informal commodity trade and engagement with China. It focuses on the impacts of Chinese actors in informal agriculture, mining and timber trade along two fast-developing trade corridors connected to the Indian Ocean. The first corridor is a transit route for commodities such as timber and minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through East Africa for export from Kenya. The second corridor links central southern Africa (Zambia and DRC's Katanga province to Beira port in Mozambique, from where agricultural products, timber and, increasingly minerals are exported). Examining the two trade routes that link Africa's informal natural resource sectors to the ever-growing Chinese market, this work will provide urgently needed insights on natural resource governance, global trade patterns, and the positive and deleterious effects of informal resource exploitation on local poverty and the natural environment. It builds on ongoing efforts by IIED and CIFOR in relation to these topics, expanding and deepening research in the area and using a well-connected policy network to achieve impact. Specifically, the research involves four work streams over the course of 36 months: i) value chain analysis of selected commodity chains with a particular focus on power dynamics and benefit distribution among actors, ii) political-economic analysis of regulatory and customary regimes governing the selected commodity trade, iii) environmental impacts analysis through land-use/land cover change and iv) cross-sector synthesis of the three sectors' findings and key policy lessons. The proposed research addresses all the objectives of the DFID-ESRC China and Africa Research Programme Call. First, it takes Africa's development challenges (the growing informal economy and depleting natural resource base) as starting points to examine Chinese engagement in the context of informal commodity trade. Envisioned as one of the first systematic examinations of micro-level Chinese activities in Africa's natural resource governance, this research will provide rigorous evidence and dispel misconceptions about Chinese trade and investment in Africa's informal economy. Second, it benefits economically-marginalized actors (such as rural resource users, women and youth not integrated in the formal economy) in the selected African countries by identifying opportunities and challenges for poverty alleviation and sustainable resource use associated with Africa's growing informal economy and China-Africa commodity trade Third, it confronts two cross-cutting themes: gender and fragile states through gender-disaggregated value chain and livelihoods analysis and inclusion of the DRC as a research site. Fourth, it supports national and international policymaking by generating an evidence-based body of knowledge strongly demanded by Chinese, African and international policymakers, businesses as well as rural African resource users - their requests for accurate information have been highlighted through the previous research, personal communications and policy engagement work by IIED, CIFOR, GEI and the African institutions (see Pathways to Impact). Finally, it adds to the development literature by extending and adopting existing methodologies to informal economy research - a field that is rapidly growing in importance for studying economic development in the global South. It also takes a multidisciplinary approach through environmental impact assessment using GIS remote sensing, which is critical to obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with sustainable development.