When Brazilian and Chinese Private Developers Build the Space in Angola: Finance, Speculation and Value Production in the Outskirts of Luanda

Abstract

Africa is often referred to as the last frontier for urbanization (Watson, 2014) and for capitalism. If the region has experienced an urbanization without industrialization (Goodfellow, 2017), the development of a real estate sector in African countries seems to place the region in a more contemporary trend of capitalism, when the secondary circuit of capital accumulation becomes dominant over the primary one (Harvey, 1985). In this sense, private finance and value production can also testify the development of capitalism in African countries, now through the production of a special merchandise, the urban space. In this paper, I consider the presence of private capital flows from China and Brazil landing in Angola to shape new frontiers of property development. After a long wave of massive loans to promote Stateled developments, small private contractors legally based in Angola but coming from China and Brazil, are reshaping the urban landscape in the outskirts of Luanda, both in partnership with Angolan state and local governments. By analyzing the current transformations occurring in the surrounding areas of Kilamba – the largest satellite city built by Chinese players in Sub-Saharan Africa to date (Buire, 2017) –, the paper will focus on two ongoing private-led projects, one led by Chinese actors and the other by Brazilians. It will also discuss how these private contractors and the state benefit from it through property and land speculation, and the rents they can extract from these processes, be they political or financial.