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?