Politics of money

About Us

This is the project website of the research group on ‘Monetary and Economic Sovereignty Compared’ which took place from 2021 to 2025 at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth and the DFG funded project on ‘The political economy of financial policy space in Ghana and Senegal’ ongoing since 2023, first at Bard College Berlin and now at University of Bielefeld.

The website also serves as the repository of the Politics of Money-Network led by Benjamin Braun and Kai Koddenbrock from 2018-2024 and funded by the German Research Foundation.

News

In a recent edited volume, Prof. Kai Koddenbrock and Dr. Ndongo Samba Sylla assemble rich and diverse perspectives from leading scholars on the progressive agenda of delinking in the context of the global socioecologi cal crisis and calls for reparative justice. The edited volume is freely accessible via this link

In his latest article, Kai Koddenbrock develops the notion of ‘earnest struggles’ in Senegal’s postcolonial history and shows that successive governments have indeed tried to move their country forward against the odds

In her latest article, Carla Coburger outlines a continuum of monetary unification systems and stresses the fundamental nature of political commitment to solidarity across monetary, productive, social, and political frontiers in order to achieve monetary unification as a stepping-stone to Pan-African unity.

Writing in the Conversation, Kai Koddenbrock argues that at no point in history has the CFA franc – the name of a colonial currency used in west and central African countries belonging to the franc zone – been closer to its demise

Writing on German trade and investment in Africa, Prof. Kai Koddenbrock argues that finding a balance between corporate interests and principled foreign policy poses a unique challenge for the nation grappling with shifting geopolitical dynamics

Writing on the Ghana's 2022-2023 debt crisis, Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo argues that Ghana's return to debt crisis is rooted in the systemic structural dysfunction of its economy, the unjust transnational order, and recent government policy mistakes

Working with the EReNSEP writing collective, Carla Coburger contributed to Costas Lapavitsas' 'The State of Capitalism' published by Verso Books

Ghana, like many other countries, is currently dealing with a new debt crisis that has been blamed on covid-induced spending and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war. Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo spoke with Lev Moscow of the A Correction podcast, arguing that far from Covid and Russia-Ukraine, the unfolding debt storm is rooted in historical, systemic and structural problems.

Under the theme: “Facing the Socio-Ecological Crisis: Delinking and the Question of Global Reparations”, the Monetary and Economic Sovereignty conference which was held between the 25-28 October 2022 attracted leading scholars across the globe to Dakar. Caroline Cornier participated and has written a synthesis of all that was discussed and agreed.

Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance analyzes how global financialized capitalism operates and reproduces itself, exploring the remarkable ability of the financial sector to maintain its dominance through even the most severe economic crises. Check out now!

Recently, we have introduced a new umbrella concept—international financial subordination (IFS)—to channel research efforts towards cumulative theory-building. IFS is about unearthing why the structural power of finance takes a particularly violent form of expression in Developing and Emerging Economies (DEEs). Learn more!

Team

Kai Koddenbrock

Prof. of Political Economy, BCB
Research Group Leader, UBT

Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo

Postdoc, UBT and BCB

Aissata Diallo

Research Associate
PhD Candidate, BCB

Carla Coburger

Research Associate
PhD Candidate, UBT

Carolin Voß

Student Assistant

International Advisors

Max Ajl

Wageningen University, NL

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven

King's College, London

Ndongo Samba Sylla

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Dakar

Network

From 2017 to 2023 Kai Koddenbrock and Benjamin Braun led and organized the research network Politics of Money. It was a group of political economists that investigated the resilience of finance capitalism. Together, we assessed the role of capitalist money for the global political economy and crisis-prone capitalism by exploring how money works as a global systemic relation, how and which actors work with, for and against it, which hierarchies it entails and what the implications for inequality are. It was funded by DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

Contact Us

Prof. Dr. Kai Koddenbrock

Universität Bielefeld

Universitätsstraße 25

D -33615

kai.koddenbrock@uni-bielefeld.de