'Green industrialisation in the Global South: between Financial Subordination and Turbulent Geopolitics' - Dr Ilias Alami

Date: 18 February 2026
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker:  Dr Ilias Alami
Talk Title: “Green industrialisation in the Global South: between Financial Subordination and Turbulent Geopolitics'
Location: Ramsden room, St Catharine's College

The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Political Economy Society and the Economics and Policy Group at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Talk Overview:
As competition intensifies for electric vehicles, transition minerals, and clean energy, many developing economies are designing state-led projects to foster green industrialisation. Financing these strategic green industrial ambitions is a challenge. In addition to limited fiscal powers, developing economies face a series of financing and policy space constraints related to their subordinate position in the global financial and monetary system and the wider global political economy. “International financial subordination” not only makes sovereign borrowing unreliable, it also drastically increases the cost of capital for renewables energy infrastructure and green industrialisation projects, therefore impeding projects of green transformation. Yet, surprisingly, we currently see a proliferation of green industrial policies in developing countries. How can we explain the multiplication of green industrial policies in developing countries despite the considerable constraints of international financial subordination? How do developing countries finance green industrial ambitions under such constraints? This article argues that developing countries are experimenting with, and creatively combining, 3 types of strategies to finance green industrial ambitions: (1) Strategies of “new state capitalism,” which involve expanding the prerogatives of state-owned financial institutions to directly invest in green industrialization projects with the private sector; (2) doubling down on the “Wall Street Consensus” (including PPPs, blended finance, and other financial “de-risking” tools); (3) “polyalignment strategies” aiming at leveraging competition between rival geopolitical hegemons in the realm of infrastructure finance, green tech, and green energy. This article critically analyses how developing countries combine and experiment with these three financing strategies, resulting in novel configurations of market-based and state-led approaches to financing green industrialisation. Using Morocco as a case study, the article asks what is the outcome of these strategies, their political economy, and the extent to which they renegotiate the position of developing countries within global monetary and financial hierarchies.

Speaker Overview:
Dr Ilias Alami is University Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development in the Centre of Development Studies and the Department of Politics and International Studies., where he writes about state capitalism, geopolitics, the green transition, global finance, and racial capitalism. He is also the Director of the PhD programme in Development Studies.

Prior to joining Cambridge, he held research and teaching positions at Uppsala University, Maastricht University, and Manchester University. He also held visiting positions at the University of Sydney, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, the University of Johannesburg, and Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets: Facing the Liquidity Tsunami (Routledge, 2019) and co-author of The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2024). Ilias is a fellow of the Transition Security Project, a member of the Second Cold War Observatory, and a member of Common Wealth's Green Planning Commission.