Processes, networks, and power relations in sub-Saharan Africa. Interview with Ricardo Soares de Oliveira

Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira joined the Centre for International Studies at Sciences Po in January 2025. Soares de Oliveira has conducted extensive fieldwork on the international political economy of African states, with a focus on extractive industries, the financial sector, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction, and African-Asian relations. In this interview, he answers our questions about his academic career and the research topics that particularly interest him.

You have just joined Sciences Po’s Centre for International Studies. Can you briefly tell us about your research career?

Since receiving a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 2005 and subsequently holding a postdoctoral fellowship there, much of my career has been spent at the University of Oxford, where I started in the Department of Politics and International Relations in 2007. I am a scholar of the political economy, and international relations in contemporary Africa. This geographical focus is paired with an interest in global political economy to form a research agenda that straddles the usual boundaries between international relations and comparative politics. It benefits from dialogues and collaborations with scholars in cognate fields such as law, economics, geography, anthropology, and history.

My work focuses on resource-rich, mostly authoritarian states and the interface between their domestic politics and the international system, as studied in two monographs—Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea and Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola since the Civil War —and a large number of research papers. It brings together a comparative-historical approach and an emphasis on long-term fieldwork. The resulting research agenda is divided into three main streams that have strong synergies with the interests of colleagues at Sciences Po: the political economy of Africa’s insertion in the offshore world; the study of Africa-Asia relations, especially involving China; and the political economy of the extractive industries.

You have done extensive research on the politics of oil, gas, mining, and finance, with an African focus. Can you tell us how this has brought you to the offshore world, the subject of your forthcoming book (Africa Offshore: The Global Offshore Economy and the Reshaping of African Politics)?

While much of my work focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, its aim is to illuminate processes, networks, and power relations that are global in scope. My thematic interests—especially the extractive industries and the financial sector—all effectively transcend state boundaries and can only be understood on a larger canvas. They are also, it turns out, densely connected to international financial centres. Oil and gas investments into Africa, for instance, often come not directly from the larger economies, but through intermediate jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, Mauritius, the British Virgin Islands, UAE, Hong Kong, etc. What applies to foreign investors into Africa also applies to African elites whose financial interests and personal lives are now operating through the sort of offshore jurisdictions that allows for low taxes, secrecy, and asset protection. It is difficult to understand Africa’s insertion in the world economy, especially since the 1990s, without understanding the role of this offshore world.

How you define this offshore world and why it is important to give it more scholarly attention?

One of the key features of today’s global economy is an “offshore world” of jurisdictions that provide financial structures, institutions, and techniques designed to provide secrecy, asset protection, and tax exemption. These are at the service of wealthy non-residents and corporations that can, in effect, circumvent “onshore” obligations. Over the past forty years, the globalisation of finance has reshaped African economies. However, a critical feature of this—the rise of this offshore system of tax havens and opaque, deregulated economies—is largely absent in the study of comparative politics and international relations of Africa. In turn, while the offshore world is the subject of an excellent literature, especially in IR, this literature rarely focuses on Africa. This gap is striking in view of the fact that, as shown by a number of quantitative studies of capital flight as well as by influential investigations such as the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers, and Luanda Leaks, offshore strategies have a disproportionate impact on Africa.
My goal with Africa Offshore is to provide the first comprehensive study of the politics of Africa’s insertion in the global offshore economy, as well as the domestic impact of this insertion.

You are also interested in Asia-Africa relations, particularly regarding China. Your presence at CERI will facilitate engaging discussions with our colleagues who possess expertise in both regions and international relations. Have you specific projects in mind for the near future?

At the turn of the century, China’s trade with Africa and presence on the continent changed scale. China soon became Africa’s leading trading partner and one of its top sources of Foreign Direct Investment. With colleagues, I put together China Returns to Africa, which was one of the first books trying to make sense of this momentous change. I have also since 2009 co-hosted an annual conference on China-Africa relations and keep close links with the global scholarly community in this field. A recent visit to Peking University allowed me to have fruitful conversations with Chinese colleagues working on China-Africa relations. Regarding specific projects, I would highlight two: the first is on the increasing links between Africa and Asian offshore financial centres, with an emphasis on Dubai and Singapore. The second project is a jointly authored paper that focuses on the use of Hong Kong as an offshore financial centre for investment into Africa, particularly by Chinese State-owned enterprises, which, it turns out, are as adept at using offshore mechanisms as Western corporations are. This project is an apt illustration of how the boundaries between what we sometimes think of as domestic politics and international relations are elusive, and sometimes unhelpful. In disciplinary terms, it also shows that much that is interesting in the study of politics exists in the interstices between regional and disciplinary concerns.

Interview by Miriam Périer, CERI.