I have worked on agricultural policies and rural development since 2013. My primary research concerns property institutions in Africa and their economic effects on Chinese agricultural investment. The PhD project builds on a total of 6 months of fieldwork in Tanzania and Zambia, and 138 qualitative interviews. It is an original documentation of Chinese investors in African agriculture that offers an updated analytical look at African state capacity in governing foreign investment in the land domain.
Three research outputs based on the PhD project are currently in preparation.
Property Institutions and State Capacity: Governing Chinese Agricultural Investment in Zambia.
This paper offers a theory about how land tenure regimes (LTRs) structure Chinese agricultural investment strategies in Zambia. The article uses three exemplars of Chinese agricultural projects to demonstrate how three distinct types of LTRs in Zambia shape investor’s strategies in land access, land transfer and land holding in the face of challenges to property rights.
The Heterogeneity of Chinese Investors in African Agriculture: A Typology of Chinese Economic Actors.
This paper typologizes Chinese economic actors based on an original dataset of 60 firm-level projects. This article shows that given different (political and economic) interests and varying levels of institutional and financial resourcefulness, different types of Chinese economic actors have varying accumulation logics and risk management strategies. They respond differently to the risks and opportunities in the host country’s regulatory regimes.
title tbd. (with Dr. Carolin Dieterle)
We argue that Chinese state-owned companies supported by the Chinese government might be indeed peculiar, yet those private companies who are funded by European governments and pressured by global governance norms may pursue multidimensional objectives beyond profit-maximization as well.
I am also developing two research projects at the moment:
1) The Politics of State Expropriation for Public Infrastructure: Evidence from Kenyan state compulsive land acquisition and compensation for Chinese-sponsored public infrastructure.
2) The Politics of Critical Mineral Governance in the Global South: To understand the implications of the rising competition between Chinese and American firms in the race for critical minerals and renewable energy transitions.
