The neoliberalisation of nature in Africa

Nature in Africa has long had a special place in the global imagination. Equally, this nature and the imagination surrounding it have long been subject to uneven processes of commodification. Under global neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, however, these processes seem to have intensified. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the contemporary ways in which Africa's nature is being neoliberalised and to provide an indication of how this neoliberalisation is negotiated by African actors. The chapter argues that this negotiation is exceptionally difficult, as the neoliberalisation of Africa's 'natural resources' goes hand in hand with the framing of those same resources as 'inverted commons': a special type of commons that belongs to the whole globe but for which only Africans pay the real price in terms of their conservation.