Paper short abstract:

Electricity storage has become an everyday phenomenon in urban Africa, e.g. as rechargeable lighting or in-home battery systems. Yet, the prevalence and diversity of battery use in Nairobi raise questions about energy/ environmental justice and the electro-infrastructural future of the city.

Paper long abstract:

Transitions to renewables, technological advances, and geopolitical ruptures have brought energy storage to the forefront of political and academic debate. For the case of electricity storage – i.e. batteries of various types and scopes – techno-managerial disciplines, e-mobility, and smart city imaginations of the global North and East dominate. Yet, especially within heterogeneous and/ or erratic infrastructural configurations – such as much of urban Africa – electricity storage can be a highly quotidian, individual practice ‘on, off, below and beyond’ the grid. Also considering the digitalization of and in African cities – but going beyond single devices, i.e. phones and laptops – electricity storage has become an infrastructural necessity for both, an erratic ‘networked city’ and its post-networked counterparts of ‘standalone’ or ‘off-grid’ systems.

Building on recent academic provocations on infrastructural containment, confinement, and capture, my contribution explores the everyday storage of electricity by households in Nairobi, a city with rather high levels of connectivity but frequent interruptions and soaring power prices. Based on qualitative research in 2021/22, I unravel the prevalence, typologies, and underlying reasons for domestic electricity storage and its individual dispositifs across the city. Focusing on two key forms – rechargeable lighting, and in-home battery systems – my contribution discusses the implications, contestations, and entanglements of individual electricity storage, in particular: a) opportunities and pitfalls for energy justice and availability, b) concerns around the environmental impact of battery production and disposal, and c) possible futures of Nairobi’s electro-infrastructural configuration and geography.