ABSTRACT
In contemporary Africa, the state is no longer uncontestably the predominant actor on the business landscape. In more and more African countries, big firms and the entrepreneurs at their helms increasingly have displaced the state’s role, thereby facilitating the rise of an arguably more conventional form of capitalist practice on the continent in which the means of production are held increasingly in private hands. This is a shift from the prior era, when such private sector roles as did exist were the nearly exclusive preserve of non-Africans. That African entities have moved boldly into this space has shifted the politics of capitalism and diluted the appeal of socialist critiques in African societies. This chapter examines this new generation of big businesspeople; increasingly present throughout sub-Saharan Africa, these “new big men” are both the pillars of contemporary Africapitalism and its principal interlocutors.
