Paper short abstract:

This paper documents and explains the ongoing transformation of the Kenyan power sector as it shifts from a national concern to a truly global assemblage. Our analysis of renewable energy projects reveals a complex network of actors and explains its impact on state power.

Paper long abstract:

This paper documents and explains the ongoing transformation of the Kenyan power sector as it shifts from a national concern to a truly global assemblage. The term assemblage refers to a novel and dynamic set of relationships that conforms to a specific pattern. These relationships are both emergent and stable, contingent and regular. More importantly, they serve to reorient particular components of institutions and specific practices--both public and private--toward global logics and away from historically shaped national logics. This reorientation has become particularly evident in the exploitation of renewable energy resources across the African continent. Whereas the postcolonial African state used to be the sole owner, operator, and organizer of a national power sector in the pursuit of national development objectives, it is now but one, though significant, actor in a global assemblage that seeks to expand access to electricity in the service of overlapping national, regional, and global goals. Our analysis of seven ongoing, large-scale, renewable energy projects in Kenya reveals a complex network of nearly 100 actors, including state entities, bilateral aid agencies, development finance institutions, energy-related investment funds, and transnational corporations. We argue that this current assemblage has profoundly impacted the capacity of the postcolonial Kenyan state to exercise control and implement policy choices in the territory it claims to govern.