A Research network on contestations and conflicts in relation to sand mining in East- And West Africa

Sand is the world’s most used solid resource.

It drives urbanization and economic growth and is the basic ingredient to countless commodities that make us ‘modern’ —from concrete and glass, to the microchips in our high-end gadgets.

While a number recent publications warn about the environmental consequences of the steeply increasing demand for sand in Sub-Saharan Africa, the deeply political dynamics of the sand business have hardly received any scholarly attention.

In this proposed project, we seek to identifying how sand conflicts and contestations in Sub-Saharan Africa intersect, how different actors negotiate access, use and political voice.

We will do so by establishing an international network of Swedish, British and Kenyan scholars with complementary expertise and competence, as well as extensive experience from working on natural resource conflicts across East- and West Africa.

Through a combination of concrete and mutually benefiting activities, this effort will in the short term contribute to the urgent need for increased scholarly awareness of- and attention paid to the emerging political economic problems and challenges associated with sand extraction in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In a longer perspective, the proposed project seeks to provide important input on how we collectively can rethink how to sustainably extract, trade and regulate a resource that underpins the promise of improved lives in many African societies.