Paper short abstract:

It is widely acknowledged that infrastructure projects can greatly facilitate spatial transformation. By focusing on the LAPSSET transport corridor in northern Kenya, this paper explores how state officials justify the project and their changing depictions of northern Kenya and its population.

Paper long abstract:

One of the continent's most ambitious ongoing transport corridor project, the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) is expected to drastically transform the landscape of northern Kenya- a territory considered a recalcitrant 'frontier' area by both colonial and postcolonial regimes, and governed through a state of exception for decades. The scope and potential implications of the corridor begs the question if and in what ways the government, donors and planners, deploy narratives that build on the very discursive practices mobilized by the colonial powers and, by doing so, justify non-participatory, authoritarian and exclusionary practices supposedly needed in the execution of large-scale infrastructure projects.

Whereas much of the justifications for opening up the region through the project echo past accounts that colonial administrators used when justifying investments in major infrastructures such as railway, the project has led to a significant shift in how state-officials portray the region. State-officials now depict the region as the next frontier for growth and acknowledge formerly derided sources of livelihood such as pastoralist economies as untapped or under-exploited.

Through archival work and a document analysis of colonial documents and official publications by the GoK, the paper identifies the ways in which colonial tropes as well as hegemonic concepts are deployed to frame both the area and communities in a way amenable to intervention. Such an understanding is important since it helps us understand not just the roles that state-officials ascribe to major infrastructure projects, but also how projects can play an instrumental role in nation-building aspirations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper documents the ways in which the Nigerian public imagine the past and future of rail infrastructure at the point of major new investments in railways. As well as aspirational futures, public discourses are also embracing a re-imagining of colonial infrastructure as public heritage.

Paper long abstract:

This paper documents the ways in which the past and future of rail infrastructure in Nigeria is imagined by the public at the point of major new investments. As well as connecting some new sites and centres, renovation and extension takes the form of re-inscribing colonial routes, but for very different political and economic logics. Nigerian public discourses situate these developments between two very different narratives: One is deeply invested in the spectacle and sensation of futurity, in transport as empowering and invigorating development, clearing away the debris of postcolonial state failure. But the other comes from a younger generation who are also embracing a re-imagining of colonial infrastructure as public heritage, researching, disseminating and consuming it via social media. This paper explores new rail investments in Nigeria as a link between past and future, not only in its material manifestations, but in its deployment in public imagination. The research draws on a collaborative project between the author and a number of visual artists and social media commentators interpreting ongoing processes of rail redevelopment and the parallel auto-curation of heritage.

Paper short abstract:

Following the path of the colonial railway, a new railway was inaugurated in 2018, connecting Addis Ababa to Djibouti. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the layering of analogies, dissimilarities and the related development models behind the two infrastructure in Dire Dawa (Ethiopia).

Paper long abstract:

A constant stream of trucks and people moves every day between Addis Ababa and Djibouti City, the capital of the eponymous nation and one of the busiest ports in the Horn of Africa. It is from this port that most of the goods, moving to and from Ethiopia, transit, making this route a strategic economic corridor for both countries.

The importance of this route can be traced back to the colonial past when, at the beginning of the 20th century, the French built the Chemin de Fer Djibouto-Éthiopien, providing landlocked Ethiopia with railway access to the sea.

Following the path of the colonial infrastructure, a new standard gauge railway was inaugurated in January 2018: the Chinese built Ethio-Djibouti railway line connecting Addis Ababa to neighbouring Djibouti.

Echoing their own physical configuration, some parallelism can be traced among the reasons for both the railways' construction: they were seen as strategic infrastructure to boost international trade flows and contribute to economic growth.

This paper will use Dire Dawa, a secondary Ethiopian city located along the train line, as a case study. Both the French and the current Ethiopian government promoted the urban expansion, and the correlated economic growth, of Dire Dawa using the railway as a critical element. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the complex layering of analogies, dissimilarities and the related development models behind the two infrastructure. In doing this, the author compares recent Dire Dawa urban development, with previous urban plans, historical maps and field observations.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we look at how coloniality deeply permeates the governance of African urban spaces. The objective, prompted by the increase in research on large-scale urban infrastructures in Africa, is to contribute to a more radical analysis of these architectures and, broadly, African urban spaces.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we look at how coloniality deeply permeates the governance of African urban spaces. The objective, prompted by the increase in research on large-scale urban infrastructures in Africa, is to contribute to a more radical analysis of these architectures and African urban spaces more broadly. Our entry point is contemporary infrastructure projects developed in "collaboration" with "new partners," such as China and Brazil, which when planned, financed and implemented in African urban regions are only possible, we argue, because of the inherited material and discursive scaffoldings that remain from the colonial period. Infrastructure projects in East Africa, in particular, are drawn on to show how situated imperial relationships become manifest in space. Theoretically we argue for approaches that center racialized disposability to articulate how imperial projects undergird and shape these urban spaces. This in turn allows us to better understand contemporary resistance to these projects as part of a longer genealogy of struggles against domination in and of Africa. Connecting across disciplines and black radical traditions, we explore the genius of marginalized people to be fugitive: to resist, avoid, challenge, trick and make evident the endurance of empire in their urban spaces. To do this two main metaphors are employed: "imperial remains" and "imperial invitations." These help to, first, emphasize spatio-geographical continuity from colony to postcolony and, second, interrogate head-on the spatialized and racialized eliminatory logics of present-day infrastructural arrangements, while highlighting the fugitive movements of those caught up in these reinstantiating dynamics of empire.

Paper short abstract:

Why do different regimes commit to similar infrastructural policies over a course of 100 years? Ethiopia's hydraulic mission in the Blue Nile Basin is a compelling case to study continuities despite disruptions in the gradual materialisation of water infrastructure, based on colonial designs.

Paper long abstract:

Any type of material infrastructure - whether it is connective (roads, rail) or transformative (energy, irrigation) originates in "institutions and ideations of political power" (Boyer, 2014: 309). These influence the planning, design and materialisation of infrastructural mega-projects.

Such institutions and ideations are not generated overnight. Rather, they are a product of long gestation periods, subject to disruptions and changing political paradigms. Why, then, have different successive regime types in Ethiopia - imperial, Marxist and federalist - committed to similar, sometimes catastrophic, hydro-infrastructural policies over the past 100 years? And how do these policies reflect the degree of state transformation at each stage?

This paper uses the case of highly contested hydro-infrastructure projects the Blue Nile Basin - (i) the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) which was Ethiopia's 21st century prestige project until dramatic political changes in 2018 possibly changed its status, and (ii) a series of interventions in the Tana-Beles Basins from the 1980s to today - to highlight striking continuities in the thinking and approach of key epistemic communities towards the development of water infrastructure in times of geo-political tension, environmental insecurity and domestic development pressures. Indeed, such continuity despite revolutionary disruptions in 1974, 1991 (and 2018?) begins with British colonial designs for Nile Control and imperial development aspirations, subscribing to a philosophy of modernisation, as topical today as it was then. The question is: does high modernism reach an end with finished infrastructure? Or is it an undying means for extending political power beyond the material constructs?

Paper short abstract:

The current wave of neoliberal globalisation and large-scale land acquisition reminiscent the colonial era characterised by accumulation by dispossession. They share many logics, in which vast areas of land of the colonies were acquired to satisfy the interests of the colonisers' institutions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate of large-scale land acquisitions in the continent of Africa as an instrument of transformation or disruption. It draws on the theoretical discourse of postcolonial, neoliberal globalisation and large-scale land acquisitions, complemented with the case study of large-scale land acquisitions for Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos, Nigeria. From a critical perspective, it is paradoxical that large-scale land acquisition can provide new opportunities for empowerment through better access to foreign capital, transfer of technology and advances in productivity. However, it is also a tool of displacement, exclusion, conflicts, dispossession, corruption, and critical changes in the processes of society-nature interaction that significantly shifts development benefits in favour of corporate elites. These reflect what Marxist economics referred to as primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession. The paper further shows that though the Lekki Free Trade Zone's land acquisition came with promises of community improvement and other Corporate Social Responsibility packages, the promises are as speculative as the implementation. While the land has been completely acquired, project implementation has proceeded at a slow pace. The acquisition became conduit for speculative urbanism and for improved land value that meet the capital interest of the investors and not necessarily the needs of the local people. The paper concludes that the current phenomenon reminiscent the historical colonial period, characterised by accumulation by dispossession, as they share many logics. Notably, vast areas of land of the colonies were acquired to satisfy the development interests of the colonisers' corporate institutions.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is focused on the historical legacies and contemporary political significance, both domestically, regionally and globally, of Ethiopia's rapidly growing air transport networks and infrastructure, as embodied in the expansion of Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is focused on the political significance of Ethiopia's rapidly growing air transport networks and infrastructure, as embodied in the expansion of Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport. The new airport is built on foundations first laid as a symbol of the country's burgeoning modernity when imperial Ethiopia entered the 'Jet Age' in the 1960s. The current expansion forms part of new efforts to make Addis Ababa the main gateway into Africa. This reimagines for the present the first transcontinental services pioneered by Ethiopian Airlines at the time of African independence, described by Bahru Zewde (2001: p. 187) as cutting 'the umbilical cord that had tied colony and ex-colony to the metropolis'. The paper thus considers significance of the expanded airport as a conduit for the enhanced mobility of people and goods as part of efforts to resignify Ethiopia's place in the continent and the world. It also considers how the material form of the airport both embodies Ethiopia's resistance to neoliberal policy norms through its integration with the country's state-led development strategy, at the same time as it is fostering the country's deepened integration into the (neoliberal) global economy. The paper thus considers Bole International airport as part of Ethiopia's rejection and embrace of neoliberal governmentalities, as well as exploring its political significance, both domestically, regionally and globally.