Extractivism and Resistance in North Africa

Northern African countries are key suppliers of natural resources to the global economy, from large-scale oil and gas extraction in Algeria, to phosphate mining in Tunisia and Morocco, and to water-intensive agribusiness paired with tourism in Morocco and Tunisia. This extractivist model of development has reaffirmed the role of these countries as exporters of nature and as suppliers of natural resources, entrenching their subordinate insertion into the global capitalist economy. The cases presented in this chapter exemplify broader patterns of primitive accumulation in the global South, where accumulation by dispossession takes the brutal form of the extraction and pillage of natural resources, and the degradation of environments and ecosystems through the privatization and commodification of land and water. This is accompanied by a surge in the forces of resistance and ‘the entrance of new actors onto the scene’ who demand that wealth be shared and distributed equitably.