This article analyses the philanthropic practices of wealthy businessmen in West and Central Africa and how they are rooted in different political economies. Current debates on African philanthropy focus on horizontal gifting as a form of solidarity. Drawing on observations, interviews and original data on the activities of corporations and foundations, we identify three types of philanthropic practices that support different forms of economic accumulation and social reproduction. They also promote new forms of governance and transnational networks. First, gifts to parties and governments contribute to neo-patrimonial dynamics. Second, in the wake of democratisation processes, some business elites started to use grants and partnerships with civil societies and international organisations to promote the rule of law and constrain prebendalism. A third type of practices comprise venture philanthropy, seed funding and incubators claims to ‘Africanise’ capital flows. It positions finance professionals as intermediaries between the offshore world and the new leaders they support.

Charcoal economies in central-east Africa are deep and powerful: they connect military and state financing with everyday family cooking. This article, based on new fieldwork in the understudied charcoal economy in South Sudan, explores the hierarchies and systems of self-employed producers, cash-for-piecework workers, middlemen and transporters, large-scale investors, and the public and defence sector financiers, landlords, brokers and security providers who all work in this political economy of forestry and charcoal-making. Drawing on local colonial archives and extensive fieldwork over 2020–2022, we break down the forms of work, investment and exploitation across this historical post/colonial landscape of labour, tree cultures, land rights and regional trade. In doing this we expand and escape the dominant and neatening metaphor of the value chain; we present a wider view of the expansion of the armed, privatised state economy; and we highlight current debates over the value, commodification and sale of forests and rural life.

The formalisation of informal security-providers has important consequences for citizenship, the rule of law, and human rights. We examine these policies in Burkina Faso, where formalisation has led to concerns about vigilante justice and ethnic targeting. Although African governments' reliance on informal security provision is well-documented, less is known about the origins of formalisation policies. To advance theory-building in this domain, this paper examines the political logic of empowering self-defence groups through the study of Burkina Faso's 2022 junta government, with comparisons to two prior regimes. We argue that formalisation is not only a mechanism for overcoming vexing security challenges, but is a tool used by leaders to build legitimacy and strengthen the regime's grip on power. In doing so, the article contributes insights into the origins of governmental policies towards self-defence groups, with implications for the study of political legitimacy, security provision and citizen–state relations.