New Political Topographies: Mining Companies and Indirect Discharge in Southern Katanga (DRC)

For analysing current reconfigurations of political order in Africa in a new way, this article suggests a focus on particular socio-economic spaces. It analyses how multinational companies govern security in the copper and cobalt mining region of Southern Katanga (DRC). The article argues that the extended role of companies in managing political order in Southern Katanga can be understood as a new form of indirect discharge by the host and the home states of multinational companies in such a way as to quasi-outsource local governance. It engenders political topographies different from those of corporate security governance in the XIXth-XXth centuries.