Politics of state-capital relations in Africa: the case of ‘big sugar’ in Zambia

This article offers a new way of thinking about divergent outcomes from large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in Africa. Challenging dominant accounts that attribute variation concerning land and industry/economic sector development to weak governance, it argues that investment outcomes are shaped primarily by the character of state-capital relations (SCRs) in the projects and sectors of concern. Empirically, we examine Zambia’s ‘big sugar’ era (1998–2024), tracing how SCRs coalesced, enabled and governed sugar investment, and how agribusiness firms built and secured project legitimacy through alliances with state actors around marketisation and commercialisation agendas. The study combines interviews (54; state, industry, community and household), focus groups (3; farmer out-growers) and documentary analysis. Findings show that SCRs enabled capital accumulation while reshaping state’s authority and territorial reach, development priorities and relations with society (i.e. various classes and their interests). The paper thus argues that the deleterious effects of LSLAs stem from SCRs’ particularities. It concludes that understanding LSLA outcomes – and foreign capital in Africa generally – requires analysing the dynamics, character and consequences of SCRs, and how specific SCRs (re)shape states. This reorientation can advance crucial scholarship on the politics of capitalism in Africa.