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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.