Anticipation by redress: Transforming African mega-infrastructure futures

Abstract

Critical scholarship has interpreted ongoing mega-projects of infrastructural expansion in Africa through the lens of colonialism. Deepening this scholarship, the article questions analytical models of global coloniality or colonial continuity. To avoid reductive accounts of the ways individuals and collectives engage mega-infrastructure projects, the article proposes an alternative model of historically informed analysis, more attentive to the contingent refractions of colonial relations in geographies of insurgency, dispossession, and racialization. In particular, the article analyzes how inheritances of the Kenyatta era (1963–1978) inform communities’ engagement with Kenya’s ongoing Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) development corridor project. This analysis shows how the promise of infrastructure-led development reactivates violent histories of displacement and forced resettlement. These histories orient collective efforts to transform state-sanctioned infrastructural futures, framing anticipation as a mode of redress. Closer attention to the ways in which historical experience shapes collective subjectivity and everyday agency, the article concludes, will allow scholars to develop more situated and more accountable analyses of the coloniality of infrastructure. Abstract (Kiswahili):Usomi muhimu umefasiri miradi mikubwa inayoendelea ya upanuzi wa miundombinu barani Afrika kupitia lenzi ya ukoloni. Kukuza na kuthibitisha usomi huu, karatasi inahoji mifano ya uchanganuzi ya ukoloni wa kimataifa au mwendelezo wa ukoloni. Ili kuepuka akaunti za kupunguza jinsi ambavyo watu binafsi na vikundi hushiriki miradi mikubwa ya miundombinu, karatasi inapendekeza mtindo mbadala wa uchanganuzi wenye taarifa za kihistoria, makini zaidi kwa miondoko ya kawaida ya uhusiano wa kikoloni katika jiografia ya uasi, unyang'anyi na ubaguzi wa rangi. Hasa, jarida hilo linachanganua jinsi urithi wa enzi ya Kenyatta (1963-1978) unavyofahamisha ushirikiano wa jamii na mradi wa ukanda wa maendeleo wa Kenya wa Bandari ya Lamu–Sudan Kusini–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET). Uchambuzi huu unaonyesha jinsi ahadi ya maendeleo inayoongozwa na miundombinu inavyowezesha upya historia za vurugu za watu kuhama na kulazimishwa kupata makazi mapya. Historia hizi huelekeza juhudi za pamoja za kubadilisha hali ya baadaye ya miundombinu iliyoidhinishwa na serikali, na kutunga matarajio kama njia ya kurekebisha. Uangalifu wa karibu zaidi wa njia ambazo uzoefu wa kihistoria unaunda utii wa pamoja na wakala wa kila siku, karatasi inahitimisha, itaruhusu wasomi kukuza uchanganuzi uliowekwa zaidi na wa kuwajibika zaidi wa ukoloni wa miundombinu.