Ngoma, Kondwani

I am an Ax:son Johnson Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication (CSSC). 

I completed my doctoral studies in Economic History in the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in May 2024. In my dissertation titled "Disentangling Empire and Decolonisation", I studied state and business relations in Southern Africa during colonisation and decolonisation. I examined the co-development of this relationship and the political risks that emerged from it. The dissertation focussed on four aspects of the strategic management of risk: corporate domicile determination, property rights acquisition and loss, and responses to economic sanctions. The thesis showed how firms can take advantage of political processes to acquire property rights to land and minerals. It further put into focus key aspects of decolonisation like economic sanctions and expropriation to underscore the role and importance of legitimacy in state and firm relations.

My current project studies how Britain defined and sought to protect its strategic interests in South Africa. It primarily examines how economic interests and tools of statecraft were conceived and applied geopolitically during apartheid. I am thus broadly interested in combining history and diplomacy to show how tools of statecraft are influenced by the interaction between states and firm.