Multiscalar politics of infrastructural labour: Sino-African labour regimes and precarious work in Ghana

Abstract

Accra, Ghana’s capital, is investing massively in its road infrastructure, reflecting a broader trend of infrastructure-led development across Africa. Similar to the experiences of other African cities, many of Accra’s road projects are funded and constructed by Chinese actors. These new infrastructures are transforming the urban fabric, and previous research has analysed the techno-political promises and outcomes of such developments. However, less is known about the labour practices and relations that large-scale infrastructures both enable and require. This paper adds a labour perspective, which is sensitive to political-economic relations at multiple scales, to the growing infrastructure literature. It examines the situation of road workers in Accra and how Sino-Ghanaian relations, at various scales, inform working conditions and labour agency. The paper draws on fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2024 and includes interviews with road workers, government officials, building consultants, a union representative, as well as observations and text analysis. The findings highlight the precarious situation and constrained agency of the studied road workers. This situation is explained by an emerging exploitative Sino-Ghanaian labour regime, driven primarily by the state’s prioritisation of infrastructure development over workers’ rights and its dependence on China to advance its infrastructure-led development agenda. This study underscores that large-scale infrastructure projects are deeply political processes shaped by multiscalar dynamics that inform and potentially reinforce labour inequalities.