Extractive contracts as political settlements: reconfiguring authority in fragile African states

Extractive governance reforms have proliferated across resource-rich but institutionally fragile African states, yet authority and benefits remain concentrated among narrow political and corporate elites. This article advances a diagnostic argument that explains this persistence by conceptualising extractive contracts as political settlements. Rather than neutral regulatory instruments, contracts operate as quasi-constitutional devices that pre-allocate authority, structure access to rents and stabilise extraction under conditions of fragility. By embedding epistemic, fiscal and temporal power, contractual arrangements constrain institutional action ex ante and shape the limits of participation ex post. The analysis shows how hybrid governance expands procedural inclusion while consolidating control at the contractual core, rendering participation a mechanism of stabilisation rather than redistribution. Extending the argument to emerging resource frontiers, including critical minerals and energy transitions, the article demonstrates how green narratives risk reproducing entrenched extractive settlements through contractual lock-in and technocratic urgency. It shifts attention from institutions to settlements to explain the durability of power.