Wellington Muzengeza is an Africa-focused infrastructure and geopolitical risk specialist, investigative journalist, and policy analyst with over 15 years of experience working across governance, investment, and large-scale infrastructure systems in Southern and East Africa. His work focuses on the political economy of critical minerals, infrastructure, and energy systems, examining how value is structured, captured, and distributed within complex and often opaque investment environments.
He specialises in analysing how external actors, including China, Gulf states, and Western institutions, engage African economies through infrastructure, energy, and digital systems, and how these engagements intersect with domestic political structures, regulatory systems, and elite networks. His work provides grounded, decision-relevant insight into market entry, political risk, and infrastructure-led development.
Wellington combines on-the-ground experience in telecommunications, energy, and logistics with deep expertise in policy analysis, geopolitical strategy, and urban systems. His research consistently interrogates the informal mechanisms through which power operates, particularly in contexts where formal institutions are weak, contested, or bypassed.
He is a contributor to Mail & Guardian and Daily Maverick, where he produces public-interest journalism and policy analysis that connects local dynamics to global debates on the energy transition, digital sovereignty, and resource governance. His recent work has focused on Zimbabwe’s lithium sector and the geopolitical competition shaping Africa’s role in the global energy transition.
He is also the author of The Informal State: How African Cities Are Governed Beyond the Law, which advances a critical framework for understanding how urban governance, tenure insecurity, and political power operate through informal systems across African cities.
He currently works across multiple African markets, engaging with policymakers, researchers, and institutions on issues related to critical minerals, infrastructure development, and geopolitical risk.
Research Interests
- Critical Minerals Governance & Resource Politics
- Africa–China Relations & Geopolitics
- Political Risk, Governance & Public Policy
- Infrastructure, Industrialisation & Urban Development
