Processes of accumulation are aided and constrained by political structures, markets, values, ideologies and religions, and their respective forms of power. Each of these shapes who can access opportunities for accumulation and who is excluded. Studies of accumulation and inequalities in Africa show that wealth and income creation are often not mediated by purely capitalist processes, and also that resources and labour mobilised for such ends are often entangled with non-capitalist institutions (Amanor, 2010; Goodfellow, 2020; Ouma, 2017). But Africa should not be seen as the big ‘economic other’: political connections, informality and the privatisation of public resources are features of capitalism in many countries, including in the Global North (Bierschenk & Muñoz, 2021). Empirical convergences between Africa and other parts of the world allow – and, indeed, call – for research that transcends narrow territorial confines. The RS is designed to meet this need, offering diachronic and synchronic perspectives on how logics of accumulation unfold across geographical and historical contexts, integral to the (un)making of particular worlds.

RS will create synergies with those RSs of Ecologies, (In)securities and Digitalities, whose research overlaps with key dynamics of accumulation and (re)distribution in Africa.