Paper short abstract

This paper explores the relationship between Africa’s ‘infrastructural turn’ and changing labour relations by focusing on the multiple temporalities characterising infrastructure development along the Lagos-Abidjan Corridor.

Paper long abstract

Africa’s renewed push towards infrastructure development brought with it new forms of territorialisation tied to both capital and labour. Infrastructure are expected to connect specific hubs on the continent to global trade flows, promote industrialisation, and increase employment rates, yet they often struggle to fulfil said promises. Questions remain around whether infrastructure create, reproduce, or reinforce sets of hierarchical scalar division of labour, or how perceptions of infrastructure’s transformative potential shape the rationales for and modalities of their development. We explore the relationship between Africa’s ‘infrastructural turn’ and changing labour relations by focusing on the multiple temporalities characterising infrastructure development, which include a range of cycles, pulses, and suspensions. Focusing on the Lagos-Abidjan Corridor, we posit that infrastructure development can reinforce geopolitical inequities in the division of labour, promote competition amongst states and regions for value capture through ‘local content’ initiatives, and foster the emergence of (domestic) marginalised/marginalising migrant labour.