Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the discursive attempts of African political elites to countervail the erosion of state legitimacy due to a desolating electricity supply. It compares Ghana and Tanzania in order to show how divergent spatial patterns of supply are also shaping the narratives of state elites

Paper long abstract:

Electricity has figured prominently in the discourses of state legitimation broadcasted by political elites all over the world. Hence, for a number of sub-Saharan rulers, past and present (Nkrumah, Rawlings, Atta Mills, Nyerere and Zenawi amongst them), electricity supply is part and parcel of narratives of national modernisation. These attempts to underpin state legitimacy work in two directions: 1) they show that the state is delivering, and 2) instil among the public the idea that political authority embodies modernity.

However, real access to electricity has been limited to urban areas, almost without exception, in sub-Saharan countries. Therefore, narratives of state legitimacy around electricity are certainly conveying limited appeal to rural populations and, in general, to unserved African citizens.

This paper explores the ways in which African political elites are addressing this challenge, by suggesting that contemporary discourses of state legitimation could be conditioned by spatial patterns in the supply of electricity.

In order to test this hypothesis, I compare Ghana and Tanzania, two countries in which electrification ranks high in the political debate (a legacy of the times of Nkrumah, Rawlings and Nyerere). By contrast, in the last decade at least, the Ghanaian public utility has been supplying electricity following a pattern which is at the same time more extensive and geographically balanced. The comparison between Ghana and Tanzania provides a good illustration of how the existence of spatial patterns of electricity supply also leads to the spatialisation of discourses of legitimation by state rulers