Bauxite Mining in Africa : Transnational Corporate Governance and Development

280 Pages·2018·4.44 MB·English

by  Johannes Knierzinger (auth.)

International Political Economy Series
Bauxite Mining in Africa
Transnational Corporate Governance and Development
Johannes Knierzinger
International Political Economy Series
Series Editor
Timothy M. Shaw
University of Massachusetts
Boston, MA, USA
and
University of London
London, UK
The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises
impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked
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ades. It has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the
South increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development,
also reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on
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and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities
as the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially
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More information about this series at
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Johannes Knierzinger
Bauxite Mining
in Africa
Transnational Corporate Governance and
Development
Johannes Knierzinger
Leipzig University
Toulouse, France
International Political Economy Series
ISBN 978-3-319-52705-5 ISBN 978-3-319-52706-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52706-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943492
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For Lulu and Claire.
A
cknowledgements
This work is the outcome of a quite laborious combination of the
literature on the political and social history of Guinea with primarily
business-oriented information on the global aluminum industry, includ-
ing 5 months of research in Guinea’s bauxite towns and the Guinean
capital, Conakry. As you can imagine, I particularly enjoyed the second
part of this study: Guinea is a thrilling and pulsating country and I met
many broad-minded and enquiring people in places, where I would not
have expected such people to be. However, even under the formally
democratic regime of Alpha Condé since 2011, the freedom of expres-
sion is not always guaranteed, particularly when foreign greenhorns have
too many questions about the mining industry. Above all, I thus would
like to sincerely thank those friends and informants who decided to
talk openly about the living and working conditions in Guinea, thereby
sometimes endangering their good relations with the establishment
and even their jobs. In order to protect those who could be negatively
affected, I will not mention any Guinean names here, but, nonetheless, I
thank all my hosts and informants for the countless hours of support, the
nice meals, the entertaining evenings, and most of all for all the precious
advices and insights. As a matter of course, this work would neither have
been possible without the constant advice and the guidance by my col-
leagues, professors, and friends in Germany, France, Austria, and the US.
Among them, I would like to especially thank Emmanuel Grégoire, Ulf
Engel, Géraud Magrin, Matthias Middell, Melanie Pichler, Karin Fischer,
Walter Schicho, Micha Fiedlschuster, Johannes Frische, David Mayer,
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Helena Flam, Ute Rietdorf, Johanna Rau, and Jess Auerbach. Last but
not least, I am also in great debt to my ever-growing extended family:
thank you for making this odyssey possible.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Concepts: Corporate Decision Spaces and Chains
of Command 35
3 Case Study: Guinea 63
4 Conclusions 245
Index 259
ix
A
cronyms
ACG Alumina Compagnie de Guinée
AFD Agence Française de Développement
AIAG Aluminium Industrie AG
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
AMC Alliance Mining Commodities
ANAIM Agence Nationale d’Aménagement des Infrastructures Minières
AOF Afrique-Occidentale Française
AOS Aluminium Oxid Stade GmbH
ARSYF Association des Ressortissants et Sympathisants de Fria
ASI Aluminium Stewardship Initiative
ASV Årdal og Sunndal Verk
BIT Bilateral Investment Treaty
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
CATIC China Aeronautic Technology and Industry Corporation
CBG Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée
CBK Compagnie des Bauxites de Kindia
CC Commodity Chains
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CFA Coopération Financière en Afrique
CGG Compagnie Guinéenne de Génie
CMRN Comité Militaire de Redressement National
CNDD Conseil National pour la Démocratie et le Développement
CNSS Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale
CNTG Confédération Nationale des Travailleurs de Guinée
COBAD Compagnie de Bauxite de Dian-Dian
CPD Conseil Préfectoral de Développement
xi