South African ‘hegemony’, ‘critical minerals’ and the history of ‘resource nationalism’ in Zambia: regional development at an inflection point?

Michael Nassen Smith

Chapter 33 in Handbook of Resource Nationalism, 2026, pp 525-543 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In the 1990s,,South African capital conquered its ‘natural’ regional market as democratization and liberalization swept through Southern Africa. South African mining and manufacturing interests were the major beneficiaries of regional mining deregulation and regional value chains soon revealed stark core–periphery dynamics between South Africa and neighbouring minerals-rich economies. However, the return of resource nationalism to Southern Africa and the integration of the region into the geopolitical conflicts surrounding ‘critical minerals’ are unsettling South African mining capital's regional dominance. The latter has also exposed the relative fragility of the South African state's regional influence and ability to advance a regional minerals-based industrialization program. This chapter discusses these dynamics from the vantage point of historical South African–Zambian relations. New competitive dynamics on the Copperbelt and Zambia's attempts to govern its ‘critical minerals’ reveals both distressing dynamics for South African mining capital and the fragile powers of an alleged regional hegemon.

Keywords: Resource Nationalism; Developmental Regionalism; Regional Development; Critical Minerals; Geopolitics of Decarbonization; Copperbelt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035333431
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