The role of the private sector in development

The PhD aims to critically examine the private sector's role in development, using World Bank Scaling Solar projects (utility-scale solar plants) in Zambia and Senegal as a multi-sited case study of privately-led and financed development. The private sector is taking a more prominent role in development, institutionalised and exemplified by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and 'from billions to trillions' mantra. However this shift, its opportunities and risks, are relatively under-researched. The research contributes to achieving the SDGs, tackling climate change and issues of equality and justice.

The PhD contributes to the theorisation of the relationship between private finance and development by better understanding private sector motivations, logics and practices in development. Secondly, it examines the states' geo- political and geo-economic strategies to engage with their role and the extent their strategies serve the private sector. Finally, the PhD assesses the (changing) distribution of benefits and risks in privately-led and financed development to address how these contrast with narratives around transnational capital in the context of the SDGs and issues of value extraction.

To answer these questions, the PhD will draw on development and economic geography literature and 9 months of field work across Zambia, Senegal and Europe using interviews as the main data collection method, supplemented by discourse and documentary analysis, and quantitative methods.