The Making of the African Road

Beck, Kurt; Klaeger, Gabriel; Stasik, Michael

doi:10.1163/9789004339040

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 89 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One of the distinguishing features of sub-Saharan African cities is the degree to which their sprawling forms have been shaped by the modal dominance of automobiles and the requirement for roads to support car and lorry use (Beck et al, 2017;Urry, 2004). Both colonial and postcolonial authorities and planners have designed cities largely around the needs of private drivers: see, for example, Morgan (2018) on two cities in South Africa.…”

Section: Statecraft and Sectoral Splintering: Road Agenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities

Cirolia

Harber

2021

Urban Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Through the lens of infrastructure governance, this article explores the configurations and operations of the urban state in sub-Saharan Africa. We deploy and extend the concept of ‘statecraft’, drawing on the recent scholarship within urban studies which explores city and municipal statecraft. Consolidating insights across several studies on transport governance in African cities, we identify three ‘sites’ of urban statecraft evident in urban Africa. First, we look at sectoral authorities, which we analyse through the common experience of ringfenced national road agencies. Carving off urban functions can fragment power over urban infrastructure. Second, we look at metropolitan authorities, which we analyse through bus rapid transit (BRT) agencies. Metropolitanisation crafts new scales of governance in Africa’s larger cities. Finally, we turn to the regulation of informal service delivery systems, which we analyse through popular transport regulation. The regulation of minibus and motorcycle taxis shows the central importance of everyday practice in urban statecraft in Africa. The case of transport governance provides a particularly vivid display of the institutional fragmentation that exists between state agencies and institutions in African cities. In this context, the urban state is not a static municipal entity, but is enacted through complex and multi-scalar relationships. These relationships relate not only to the assignment of functions or territorial design, but also to the practices which animate infrastructural systems. More generally, we argue that there is ample scope within the African urban governance debates for deeper interrogation of statecraft.

show abstract

Section: Statecraft and Sectoral Splintering: Road Agenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities

Cirolia

Harber

2021

Urban Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Most studies focus on key "Western" actors such as colonial experts, businesses, and planners, as well as on the central hubs-or "portals" [82]-of globalization (port cities in particular) [83,84], [29] (pp. [152][153][154][155][156][157][158]. We still know relatively little about the people who made up the medium-und lower levels of these networks, and how they interacted with each other-from administrative and commercial staff such as civil and electrical engineers, plumbers and fitters, to local artisans, mechanics, and crafts-persons, (self)repairmen, or saleswomen.…”

Section: Exchanges Transfers and Network-writing Post/colonial Histories Of Technology And The Environment As Histories Of Entanglementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For sub-Saharan Africa, even the "big three"-steam ships, railways, and the telegraph-have only been selectively explored [26,[140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147] 19 . Research on road, energy, or electricity infrastructures had been a particular lacuna which has recently been tackled more systematically in post/colonial history of technology and the environment ( [148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155] on roads and transport; [15,19,20,[156][157][158][159] on energy and electricity). Most studies focus on urban infrastructures, exploring how water supply or sanitation systems contributed to-or undermined-the creation of colonial spaces in line with the "dual city" model of segregated urban planning [18,29,[160][161][162][163][164][165][166].…”

Section: Rethinking (Colonial) Infrastructures and The Concept Of "Large Technical Systems"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Histories of Technology and the Environment in Post/Colonial Africa: Reflections on the Field

Hasenöhrl

2021

Histories

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much has happened since Dipesh Chakrabarty, at the turn of the millennium, paradigmatically called for a “provincialization of Europe”. The paper connects with three major trends in current history of technology, exploring these threads with regards to the Global South in general and post/colonial Africa in particular: (1) exemplifying and (later) disentangling transnational connections; (2) rethinking (colonial) infrastructures; and (3) exploring technologies-in-use, everyday practices and perceptions. Unpacking established Science and Technology concepts such as Thomas P. Hughes “Large (Socio)Technical Systems” (LTS) approach for post/colonial contexts, the paper argues that we need to move beyond the much-invoked “key figures” and drivers of global technological (ex)change and scrutinize place- and time-specific landscapes of technology instead. In particular, we need to pay closer attention to seemingly peripheral actors and actants as well as to the manifold interrelations between the human and the “natural” world.

show abstract

“…The dangers of everyday urban mobility thus remain rather overlooked, especially beyond the continent's megacities and national capitals. Anthropological attention to African roads has often approached roads as infrastructure and ambivalent icons of modernity, frequently focusing on highways and long-distance routes (Beck et al 2017;Klaeger 2013). Yet for the most part these studies do not bring us inside the city itself, with its unique patterns and rhythms of mobility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban fractures: mobility, risk and the accidenté in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo

Phippard

2023

Africa

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Changing practices of motorized mobility in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have given rise to what residents call the ‘accidenté’: a victim of a traffic accident, often involving the city’s increasingly ubiquitous motorcycles. This article explores the significance of the accidenté in Kikwit’s social universe and considers how everyday urban mobilities are imbued with a sense of bodily exposure, risk and the threat of broken bones, so much so that ‘fracture’ has come to be seen as an urban condition. This entanglement of perceptions of mobility, risk, fracture and urbanity represents both a particular spatialization of risk in relation to city life and a critique of how corporeal vulnerability is tied into other vulnerabilities in the daily lives of urbanites. By analysing how one can become an accidenté and what trajectories of care transpire after the moment of injury, this article reveals how this new patient subjectivity necessitates a confrontation with potentially enduring motility limitations and risky navigations of the city long after the accident.

show abstract

The Making of the African Road

Abstract: Fees are subject to change.This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Cited by 13 publications

References 89 publications

Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities

Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities

Histories of Technology and the Environment in Post/Colonial Africa: Reflections on the Field

Urban fractures: mobility, risk and the accidenté in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About