In her pathbreaking book, Amy Elizabeth Stambach investigates American investors’ incursions into Africa, as seen by affected people on the ground. Stambach synthesizes a cluster of US-assisted industries across the continent, focusing on water resource management, real estate procurement, agricultural businesses, health care, and private education. Drawing on more than thirty years of research conducted in southern and eastern Africa, The Corporate Alibi examines how corporate globalization has been based on legal yet environmentally and socially devastating practices that divert scrutiny from the harm investors cause to the environment, democracy, and people.
More than just a critique of corporate globalization, this book serves as a beacon of hope, illuminating how communities can and do work around, against, and sometimes with investors to advance shared interests and ideals. Stambach suggests ways to operate within national and global governance structures to bring about a more politically and economically equitable future.
Amy Elizabeth Stambach is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of Faith in Schools and Lessons from Mount Kilimanjaro.
"This thought‑provoking and timely ethnography reveals how US corporations exploit Africa while undermining African governments and calls for corporate accountability and a more equitable global system."—Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Cape Town
"Showing how US corporations use philanthropy, subsidiaries, and co‑opted watchdogs to deflect scrutiny into their operations, The Corporate Alibi is important to all concerned about ethical business practices."—Patience Mususa, Nordic Africa Institute
"A much‑needed contribution to our understanding of how corporations work with NGOs, governments, and media to conjure an image of benevolent philanthropy while systematically stripping communities of their capacities to survive and prosper."—James H. Smith, author of The Eyes of the World: Mining the Digital Age in the Eastern DR Congo
258 pp.6 x 9Illus: 11 b/w illustrations, 1 map
9780520394414$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Jun 2025