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Paper short abstract:

Many infrastructure projects in Africa are driven by visionary promises, but are also characterized by delays and false starts. This paper presents a case study that shows how ordinary Kenyans build their futures from ruins and rubble of suspended construction projects.

Paper long abstract:

From mega-projects to small-scale repairs, many construction projects in Kenya are characterized by delays and false starts. One such case is the famous Kamariny stadium, where since the 1950s world-class long-distance runners have prepared for international races. Part of government’s vision to develop Kenya into a “globally competitive and prosperous country”, the project promised to turn old athletics tracks into an imposing modern stadium. However, the construction was started and then suspended, leaving behind rubble, ruins, and scattered materials. These are material starting points for Kenyans’ engagement with the future – enchantment, fear, anticipation, disruption, waiting – and represent both possibilities and anxieties about state-driven development of infrastructure. Such ambiguities and contradictions are, I argue, not simply a result of the projects’ construction, but rather of their suspension (Gupta 2018) – between the projects' proverbial beginnings and ends, but also between promises of a modernist future and material realities of a ruinous present. Suspension as ethnographic observation and analytical framework condenses the key tension of contemporary vision-driven development in Kenya and beyond: the one between promises of progress and modernization and possibilities of failure and exclusion. I argue for an ethnographic approach to infrastuctural development in Africa that looks beyond the more obvious focus on mega-projects or urban hotspots, and that highlights how ordinary citizens deal with contradictions between visionary promises and material uncertainties. Analysts should focus on suspension’s rubble and ruins in order to understand development and future-making in Africa beyond simplistic narratives of rising and abjection.