In this paper we combine infrastructure studies and black radical traditions to foreground how imperial remains deeply inform the logics that bring forth contemporary large‐scale infrastructures in Africa. The objective, prompted by the ongoing avid promotion of such architectures on the continent, is to contribute to an analysis that centres race in these projects. Our argument is that these initiatives have to be understood in relation to inherited material and discursive scaffoldings that remain from the colonial period, through what we refer to as imperial remains and imperial invitations. These remains and invitations demonstrate how recent mega infrastructures inhere, in their planning, financing and implementation, a colonial racialism, despite rhetorical claims to the opposite. Empirically, we draw, principally, on China built and financed infrastructure projects from Kenya, and theoretically upon black radical traditions in order to foreground a longer genealogy of black pathologising and resistance to it on the continent.
Though a perennial problem in postcolonial Kenya, extrajudicial executions (EJE) show few signs of ending and in recent years are even accelerating amongst young men in informal settlements. Avenues for legal, institutional and civil society redress, nominally expanded in recent years, display an ongoing tendency towards disconnection from the grassroots. A case study from Mathare, Nairobi, seeks explanations for the lack of urgency in addressing EJE and also the limited effectiveness of responses to them that are rooted in the political economy of interests of civil society actors, which tends to perpetuate these ‘excluded spaces’ of the slum. The authors do so, however, by exploring one particular struggle to show how frustration with civil society is being used by social justice activists to articulate ideas of ‘everyday’ violence to mobilise for change that disrupts the apparent normalisation of EJE
Much has been said about the presence of China in Africa over the last fifteen years, with, for the most part, these discussions affirming either a ‘for’ or ‘against’ position. Working from a micro-level perspective, this ethnographic article looks at how the everyday associations of ‘China’ and ‘the Chinese’ in Kenya are increasing, engendering expansive signifiers that proliferate as Kenya's relationship with China deepens. Although I anchor this argument in the local discursive practices that shape the proposed Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA)–Westlands expressway, I trace how references to China and the Chinese expand beyond construction to take up social meanings that are continuously being assembled. Although the referents may seem unrelated in their diversity, I argue that they index wider local anxieties that de-centre China and re-centre the Kenyan government in practices that place the burdens of ‘development’ on the country's already burdened citizens.
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