On the Coloniality of “New” Mega‐Infrastructure Projects in East Africa

Abstract

This article responds to a preference for short‐term history in research on the infrastructure turn by engaging with the longue durée of East Africa’s latest infrastructure scramble. It traces the history of LAPSSET in Kenya and the Central Corridor in Tanzania, revealing the coloniality of new and improved transport infrastructure along both corridors. This exercise demonstrates how the spatial visions and territorial plans of colonial administrators get built in to new infrastructure and materialise in ways that serve the interests of global capital rather than peasant and indigenous peoples being promised more modern, prosperous futures. The article concludes by suggesting that a focus on the longue durée also reveals uneven patterns of mobility and immobility set in motion during the colonial scramble for Africa and reinforced after independence. These “colonial moorings” are significant as they shape political reactions to new mega‐infrastructure projects today and constrain the emancipatory potential of infrastructure‐led development.

Building on the ruins of empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya

“…The analytical framework proposed in this article -paying attention to mobilities, anticipation and scale -reveals that LAPSSET also deviates from the legacy of the UR in significant ways. Consequently, this article departs from previous historical analyses (Enns and Bersaglio 2019) of LAPSSET that assert a direct continuation or repetition of colonial infrastructures. While the UR helped to forge a 'monstrous chain' , with clear hierarchies between empire and colony, the scalar topology that LAPSSET presents is more complex and ambivalent.…”

“…In particular, Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio's (2019) article juxtaposing the LAPSSET corridor with colonial-era infrastructure-led developments in Kenya's 'Northern Frontier District' prompts a critical discussion about the ways in which recent infrastructural projects continue or depart from their colonial predecessors. Enns and Bersaglio recognise several parallels between past and present infrastructures, and conclude that the similarities between the LAPSSET and colonial infrastructure projects are significant, especially in terms of the 'spatial visions' they reproduce (Enns and Bersaglio 2019). While I do not fundamentally disagree with this conclusion, I continue the discussion by deepening the conceptual basis of longue durée historical analyses of infrastructure projects, suggesting more attention to discontinuities, particularly in terms of the 'politics of scale' .…”

“…It is vital to recognise these discontinuities as well, as they testify to the ways in which different actors, including people living near the LAPSSET corridor, actively imagine, shape and challenge the complexity and ambiguous scalar hierarchies of modern globalised capitalism. Echoing Enns and Bersaglio's (2019) call for more historical studies on colonial legacies of infrastructure projects in Africa, this article furthermore emphasises the need to explicitly include the active role of people living near mega-infrastructure projects in shaping them.…”

“…It may seem paradoxical that settling down is seen as a prerequisite to participation in a modernity defined by hyper-mobility. however, the mooring provided by a fixed residence is regarded as a basis for facilitating the participation in a national project, as well as global flows of goods and capital (Enns and Bersaglio 2019).…”

Drawing together: making marginal futures visible through collaborative comic creation (CCC)

“…Alesina et al, 2011). Not only were infrastructures instrumental in the creation of colonial empires (Headrick, 1981;van der Straeten and Hasenöhrl, 2016), but also they often continue colonial impositions of lines of transport and communication onto landscape and people (Aalders, 2020;Enns and Bersaglio, 2019).…”