Critiquing the Ambivalent Spatialities of Resilience: the European Union’s Economic Policies on Promoting Resilience in Africa

Abstract

In this article I aim to critically clarify the spatial dimensions of the notion of resilience, particularly in economic policies important for development. The EU’s policies towards Africa, specifically the External Investment Plan (EIP) and the European Investment Bank’s Economic Resilience Initiative (ERI), provide an empirical illustration. Within International Relations, theorizations have sometimes lacked logical clarity, risked overemphasizing the local factors influencing resilience, and undertheorizing the external ones. Resilience is not wholly determined at a given local scale. There are also influences external to the scale, including other resilience’s scales. There may be tradeoffs between scales. Building upon local resources boosts resilience, but understanding the local as decontextualized does not. External help to local populations and bearing due responsibility support resilience, but external interventionism and/or one scale excessively depending on another do not. The EIP’s and the ERI’s problems illustrate those visions of the external and local that affect resilience rather negatively.