Project description
A closer look at Africa’s industrial legacy
The story of industrialisation in Africa is often framed as a cycle of booms and busts, charted by economists. Less attention has been paid to the factories themselves. The ERC-funded MAGIC project aims to fill the knowledge gap by examining the shoe factories built by Bata in Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe during the late colonial era, many of which still operate today. Undertaking anthropology, geography, and economic analysis, the project will explore how these factories reshaped local economies, landscapes, and social life. It will draw on both shop-floor testimonies and quantitative data. The overall goal is to recast Africa’s industrial history as a lived, grounded experience rather than an abstract trend.
Objective
This interdisciplinary project investigates the long-term history of factories built by the multinational company Bata in Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe in the late colonial period and still operating today. This research addresses the under-studied area of industrialisation and manufacturing in Africa, particularly the lack of comprehensive understanding about the local impact of these factories, and the mechanisms behind their influence.
The project’s innovative approach combines historical anthropology, geography, global history, and quantitative economic analysis to bridge the gap between micro-level factory studies, meso-level political and business histories, and macro-level development scholarship. By focusing on these Bata factories, MAGIC aims to explain how manufacturing facilities have both shaped and been shaped by colonial and postcolonial contexts, adapted to and transformed local communities and environments, while giving rise to competing visions of modernisation and economic development, and show what measurable impacts these factories have had on local economic indicators.
MAGIC's interdisciplinary methodology integrates qualitative and quantitative methods, bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives on African industrialisation and development. As the first historical in-depth study of manufacturing, shoe production, and Bata's activities in Africa, the project will generate groundbreaking empirical evidence to challenge existing narratives about African industrialisation.
It will generate groundbreaking empirical evidence challenging existing, generalising narratives about African industrialisation and informing future policy debates on sustainable and equitable development in the Anthropocene. The interdisciplinary research design will pave the way for a whole new field of inquiry, the industrial history of Africa, and advance theoretical debates and the way in which we understand and study industrialisation and development more broadly.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- social sciences other social sciences development studies development economics
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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04109 Leipzig
Germany
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