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.