Paper short abstract:

This paper hopes to address a lack of scholarship on contemporary western experiences of travel in the context of post-colonial Africa by exploring how networks of transportation and imaginative geographies intersect.

Paper long abstract:

What we believe to be the reality is in fact a highly constructed vision mediated by various systems of knowledge/power; and the most material outputs of these systems are these complex interdependent networks of communication and transportation. Their link to western colonialism is undeniable: France's and England's capacity to conquer and then rule their respective overseas empire was made possible by shipping and telegraph lines, railways and roads. If this idea of projection of power through transportation networks is rather straightforward, its corollary looking at how these networks then framed and influenced the very perception that Europeans have had of the spaces they conquered is widely overlooked, let alone their contemporary influences on how Westerners travel and experience these post-colonial spaces nowadays.

This paper hopes to address this lack of scholarship on contemporary western experiences of travel in the context of post-colonial Africa by exploring how networks of transportation and imaginative geographies intersect. It investigates how western travellers consume the African space and how this is shaped by their very way of travelling. It argues that current networks of transportation in Africa are experiencing a growing tension between uncertainty and standardisation, indeed while international air traffic is expanding rapidly bringing a more standardized way of travelling; road systems and local/regional air traffic have more mixed records leaving travellers in a situation of uncertainty once they leave international airports. This tension, in turn, influences how Western travellers practice/use these networks and thus their imagination of Africa's space.