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- Convenors:
-
Robert Heinze
(German Historical Institute Paris)
Gladys Nyachieo (Multimedia University of Kenya)
David Drengk (Technical University Dresden)
Jean Sebastian 'Baz' Lecocq (Humboldt University of Berlin)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Perspectives on current crises
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
- Location:
- S58 (RW I)
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 1 October, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel looks at transport infrastructures in Africa through the lens of precarity and stability in historical perspective, emphasising usage and intersectional encounters of passengers, workers, operators and the state.
Long Abstract:
Since the infrastructural turn, the social sciences have taken to emphasize the embeddedness and precarity of African infrastructures. In transport, as in other infrastructures, informality and precarity seem to determine much of the everyday interactions of ordinary Africans. Transport networks in Africa have gone through periods of stabilization and dissolution. A closer look shows that "informal" transport infrastructure has shown remarkable stability overall, while "formal" transport infrastructures like train networks were often met with resistance.
The panel takes a historical approach to the analysis of transport infrastructures, looking at the dynamics between processes of precarity and stability. It emphasizes the interactions of African users and providers with these infrastructures, questioning aspects of (in-)formality, economical and socio-cultural aspects. In particular the questions of race and gender will be an important part of the panel, both from the perspective of users and providers. We invite contributions dealing with the following questions:
• How did providers of transport deal with economic and political precarity?
• What is the role of states in ensuring or hindering stable transport provision?
• How did, historically, interactions of users with transport infrastructures change? How did they try to change or stabilize networks and transport provision?
• What role do race and gender play in these processes?
• Does informality equal precarity?
The panel pis organised by the International Network on Transport Research in Africa (INTRA), but is open to all researchers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 1 October, 2024, -Martin Kalb (Bridgewater College)
Paper short abstract:
My presentation focuses on the import and employment of mules and camel in German Southwest Africa (1884-1915, modern-day Namibia). In light of the Rinderpest pandemic, German officials introduced such alternate transport animals to sustain transport infrastructure in their settler colony.
Paper long abstract:
German colonists in Southwest Africa (1884-1915, modern-day Namibia) relied on beasts of burden to cross the Namib Desert, construct infrastructure, and fight wars. In light of the Rinderpest pandemic, they hoped to import mules and camels on a broader scale, ultimately creating a global network supplying these alternative transport animals. My presentation focuses on such transport infrastructure. In my view, German ambitions and failures, visible in descriptions of supposedly stubborn animals, shed light on precarity and stability in Germany's settler colony.
Transport animals left hoofprints in the historical record. German colonial files explicitly focus on draft and pack animals. Plus, smaller collections can tell scholars much about logistics and transport infrastructure. Newspaper articles, reports, travel accounts, diaries, and photographs shed light on daily life. Naturally, such materials are anthropocentric and seeped in the colonial gaze, focusing mostly on costs and logistics. There are occasional references to herders and broader misjudgments; there are even acknowledgments of German ignorance, incompetence, and violence.
Scholars have begun paying more attention to animal traction. Although technology and imperial infrastructure still dominate discussions, studies have focused on livestock and commodities, disruptions tied to diseases, and specific species. Plus, the animal turn and research highlighting actor-trade networks have given scholars much to work with. Such scholarship underlines that including animals “in human history does more than simply complete the story – it changes it” (Sandra Swart). My comments engage and wrestle with that scholarship while expanding the limited discussion of camels and mules in German Southwest Africa.
Gladys Nyachieo (Multimedia University of Kenya)
Paper short abstract:
In Kenya, motorcycle taxis (boda boda) provide informal transport for many. For a long time, the sector was in operation without recognition as a public transport provider by the state. It was therefore not planned for nor governed formally by legislation leading to instability and precarity.
Paper long abstract:
Motorcycles taxis (boda boda) offer an innovative alternative transport for many people in Africa. Since the start of its operation in Kenya, the boda boda motorcycles have touched every aspect of life of most people regardless of social status, occupation, area of residence among others. Motorcycles are providing transport where formal transport failed. It is also a form of employment for many. For a long time, the boda boda sector was in operation but was not recognized as a public transport provider by the government. This meant that by law, the boda boda was not legitimately considered as public means of transport in Kenya. The state ‘refused’ to acknowledge the presence and impact of boda boda motorcycles in the day to day lives of the people. The sector was not planned for nor governed formally through legislation. This paper argues that, because the government of Kenya took a long time to recognize this mode of transport, they did not prepare for it in legislation as well as plan for its infrastructure. While this mode meets most of the citizens mobility and access needs, there are a number of challenges associated with it including motorcycle related crashes and insecurity among others. The paper seeks to find out whether lack of recognition of this informal mode of transport led to precarity.
Paul Sprute (Leibniz-Institut für Raumbezogene Sozialforschung, Erkner)
Paper short abstract:
Based on ongoing research on "Constructing Transport Infrastructure in West Africa," the paper explores how usage, operation, maintenance and construction of roads and railroads in connection to the Bong Mining Company developed before and since its closure due to the Liberian civil war in 1990.
Paper long abstract:
This paper centres on the precarious stability of transport networks originally connected to the Bong Mining Company in Liberia during its operation and following its end due to an escalation in the Liberian civil war in 1990. The focus will be on the question how the Liberian neighbours' usage of the transport networks of the mine interacted with the mine's operation as well as its abandonment and withdrawal of the international employees. This question is linked to the materiality of construction activities (Filippello 2017) continuing within the transport networks centering on the abandoned mine which built upon the existing infrastructures while also adapting them for the use of different actors. Different territorial scales are considered through the mine's cargo railway towards the port of Monrovia, its road connection to the national road network and the market town of Kakata as well as local roads centering on the mining settlement itself (Lagae 2022).
Ultimately, this paper reflects how formal infrastructures have continued to be used, operated and constructed through periods of their apparent informalization and precarization during which the constellation of actors was in flux. The paper shows how the users of these infrastructures could stabilize them temporarily but remained bound to agendas of the Liberian state and business interests.
The paper is based on recently started research on "Constructing Transport Infrastructure in West Africa: A multiscalar history of materialities, territories and actors" and builds on archival research in Liberia and Germany as well as historical fieldwork in Liberia, including interviews.
Francis Ngure (ISCTE-University of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
The Kenyan meter gauge railway has played an influential role in shaping the country's transport history yet currently a majority of its structures present as ruins. The paper intends to delve into the afterlives of the railway structures as narrated by the locals around them.
Paper long abstract:
Railway transport was first introduced during the Industrial Revolution; since then, it has played a pivotal role in the economic development of nations. Kenya's first encounter with the railroad came in 1986 with the British construction of the meter gauge railway (MGR). Despite its seminal role in modern Kenyan history, the MGR fell victim to many challenges ranging from aging equipment, maladministration, and an acute lack of maintenance. In an attempt to mitigate the challenges, in 2014, five East African governments agreed on the advancement towards the standard gauge railway (SGR). With the SGR, a new stage was reached in the social life of the MGR. The new SGR running at 120km per hour, arrived complete with a new railway network, new locomotives, and modern terminal stations. As a result, most of the MGR structures have been abandoned and left in decay. Such structures include the goods sheds and the last mile connections that were once vibrant pickup points for goods.
The data to be presented has been collected through photography and walking interviews in the period of June-October 2023 and January 2024. The presentation will entail the use of cartographical maps and photographs while the results from the interviews will be presented ad verbatim. The discussion will aim to show how the Locals around the structures in Nakuru county narrate the afterlives of the material remains along the railway line. Similarly, the presentation will discuss how the structures have been reappropriated over time by the locals.
Jean Sebastian 'Baz' Lecocq (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses “national interest” as the main value in national airlines. “Neo-liberal” dogma on profitability hide the affective social and political values of large-scale infrastructural enterprises and distort their functionality.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I discus “national interest” ––a concept that encompasses rational, strategic, economic, and emotional aspects of statecraft and national identity––as the main value in national (and imperial) airlines at the example of East African Airways Corporation (EAAC), a colonial federal airline that continued to serve the East African Federation after independence until 1977, and its main successor company Kenyan Airways (KQ). As for every national airline, for EEAC and KQ profitability was always made secondary to their role in national (and imperial) interests. Hence, like most national airlines, EEA and KQ ran unprofitably in most years. Their performance in serving national interests varied over time from a source of pride, to a source of skepticism and perceived state failure, visible in the troubles the airlines had to keep their planes in the air. I will argue that views of African national airlines as “dysfunctional”, “commercially unviable”, or “corrupt” reflect wider discourses on the states and nations they are part of, in line with “neo-liberal” discourses and dogmas on profitability as the prime motivation in services that should be left to the free market as states are by definition (by dogma) unfit to run commercial enterprises. These “neo-liberal” discourses on commercial profitability and private enterprise hide the affective social and political values of large-scale infrastructural enterprises and even distort their functionality. They should be offset, in African aviation history as elsewhere, against the immaterial and rationalized affective “national interest” as a main motor in national and colonial airlines.
Houd Kanazoé (Virtual University of Burkina Faso)
Paper short abstract:
Shared taxis are one of the informal urban transportation infrastructure in Bobo-Dioulasso. Faced with precarity, taxi drivers have transformed their car to run on gas. Despite being forbidden by the State, this practice is a manifestation of a 'revenge of context' to combat mobility injustice.
Paper long abstract:
Urban public transport in the global South, and particularly in Africa, is dominated by informal transport. While its presence is partly related to the temporal instability of public enterprises, informal transport, like shared taxis, is the most adapted to the socio-economic realities of cities like Bobo-Dioulasso. This city and its residents undergo precarity due to the consequences of an economic crisis because of certain State policies and the increase in fuel prices. Instead of creating mobility injustice, this precarity has created possibilities from below that shape today's urban transport sector in Bobo-Dioulasso.
In this city, many taxi drivers, with the collaboration of local car mechanics and thanks to expertise from neighbouring countries like Ghana, have transformed their cars to run on subsidized gas instead of expensive fuel. In doing so, mobility remains cheap and allows city dwellers and taxis drivers facing precarity to move around the city and continue to be the breadwinners for their families. This paper, therefore, highlights how city dwellers (drivers and passengers), in the face of precarity, find their own way, shaping their right to move beyond the framework designed by the state. Indeed, while running cars locally transformed to run on gas is seen as dangerous and forbidden by the state, which has set subsidies for ecological purposes, city dwellers see this practice as a manifestation of a “revenge of context” (De Sardan, 2021). For once, they are taking advantage of the state to fight against mobility injustice.
Key words: Bobo-Dioulasso-Gas Taxi-Mobility Injustice
Donita Nshani Tata (University of liege)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the state's role in regulating the taxi transport sector in Cameroon, focusing on street checks, law enforcement, and daily interactions. It explores the informal economy, social, political, and economic relations, and the strategies employed by workers to navigate challenges.
Paper long abstract:
This paper provides an in-depth examination of the state’s role in regulating economic activities within the taxi transport sector in Cameroon. It scrutinizes the mechanisms of car licensing, driver’s license issuance, roadworthiness certification, insurance, and bus station allocation. The study further explores the practice of regular street checks by law enforcement officers to ensure compliance with these regulatory instruments. Transcending the formal and informal binary, the paper delves into the interpretation and application of laws beyond their written texts. It investigates how these laws are enforced, and order is maintained in the transport sector. The daily interactions between law enforcement personnel, municipal workers, drivers, and union representatives under these regulations are also examined. The paper highlights the unsaid practices by state officials during operations to enforce regulation, providing a unique insight into the informal economy in urban cities. It discusses the formalization of social, political, and economic relations within this sector, and how state officials perceive work in the transport sector and interact with direct and indirect actors.
Based on extensive research and interviews conducted with workers, employers, and government officials in the transport sector in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 2020 and 2022, the paper offers valuable insights into the resilience and adaptability of the informal economy. The findings shed light on the strategies employed by informal economy workers to navigate various challenges and the role of government policies in supporting or hindering these efforts. This paper contributes significantly to the discourse on sustainable development in Africa.
Yusuf Madugu (Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria)
Paper short abstract:
The failure of public transport operators to meet the population basic mobility needs had led to an increasing demand for effective passenger transport services resulting to an overgrowing fleet of privately owned shared motorcycle taxi that filled the gap.
Paper long abstract:
The failure of public transport operators to meet the population basic mobility needs had led to an increasing demand for effective passenger transport services resulting to an overgrowing fleet of privately owned shared motorcycle taxi that filled the gap. This was as a result of the government policy to curtail the global economic crisis of 1980s (which also affected Nigeria) by introducing the Structural Adjustment Program which withered funding for public transport system. However, Instead of solving the economic crisis, SAP further aggravated it and the end result was inflation. Inflation and privatisation were major factors leading to the collapse of the public urban transport system. This condition made it difficult for the transport service providers to replace their aging vehicles with new ones. However, the gap created in the transport sector was to some extent filled up with the development of the “shared bike” system in which a commercial motorcyclist operated full scale city transport service by operating a pick and drop system anywhere along the minor and major routes. It is at this end that this study intends to uncover and analyze how shared bike taxi evolved and served as alternative to the urban transport services. The sourced materials for this work included the extensive use of written records and oral information.