Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at practices for rolling out and accessing prepaid electricity in Maputo, Mozambique as a way to develop new approaches and understandings of urban Africa, particularly in terms of service delivery in poorly resourced and highly informalized urban areas.

Paper long abstract:

There is now a considerable debate about the conceptual and practical challenges that African urbanization raises to mainstream urban theory, planning, and governance. The challenges are evident in the shortcomings of programmes for slum-eradication and the provision of utilities such as water, sanitation, and electricity. Prepaid systems are increasingly popular in the delivery of urban services in Sub-Saharan Africa, but remain under-theorized. Some scholars highlight the advantages of prepayment to consumers and service providers in the face of weak governments, scant infrastructure planning, unclear land tenure, and persistent poverty. Other scholars scrutinize the inequality and social controls imposed by prepayment on low-income citizens whose social life rests on a sense of provisionality and uncertainty.

This paper uses the case study of prepaid electricity in Maputo, Mozambique to investigate the dynamics of access to electricity by urban dwellers and how their practices hinge upon not only their challenging livelihood conditions but also upon business practices, infrastructure planning and land regularization policies. The paper provides insights into how prepayment, as a technology for rolling-out and accessing urban infrastructures, is invested with a specific sociality and politics about who its users are, what kinds of lives they lead, and their political subjectivity. The paper thus makes a contribution to reframe mainstream theories and policies regarding utility service delivery in poorly resourced and highly informalized urban areas of Sub-Saharan Africa.