Extractive Economies and Gendered Livelihoods: A Political Economy of Resource Extraction in the Central African Republic, 2021–2026

This article examines the political economy of natural resource extraction in the Central African Republic (CAR), analysing its gendered impacts on women’s livelihoods. Grounded in African feminist critiques of development, it interrogates how extraction reshapes the gendered political economy, moving beyond narratives of exclusion to reveal systemic restructuring. The study employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on 12 focus group discussions and 45 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with women in artisanal mining and agrarian communities affected by industrial concessions. This primary data, collected during fieldwork in 2023, is synthesised with analysis of policy documents and civil society reports. Findings reveal that extractive operations, dominated by foreign capital and weak governance, routinely dispossess women of agricultural and forest resources. This dispossession reconfigures livelihood strategies, pushing women into precarious, informalised roles within extractive supply chains while intensifying their unpaid care burdens. The paper argues these outcomes are structurally embedded within the extractive model, not incidental. It concludes that transformative policy must centre gendered social reproduction and livelihood security, advocating for a fundamental re-evaluation of resource governance rooted in feminist political economy.