Material politics on and off the grid in Sub-Saharan African urban electricity configurations: an essay on hybrid urbanism

Sylvy Jaglin, Mélanie Rateau and Emmanuelle Guillou

Chapter 12 in Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities, 2024, pp 196-211 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In the highly heterogeneous cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, electricity remains a rationed good. Based on a comparative analysis of several case studies, this chapter interrogates the hybridisation and infrastructuring processes at work in electricity configurations composed of multiple socio-technical dispositifs, both centralised and decentralised. The aim is twofold. Firstly, to understand whether and how these dispositifs can ‘act as infrastructure’; and secondly, to explore the terms of an alternative urbanism that socially and spatially organises their diversity into sustainable and affordable services. Based on the materiality of existing socio-technical arrangements and their underlying imaginaries, the chapter introduces three ideal-types of infrastructuring paths (the ‘augmented’ network, plug-and-play arrangements and modular dispositifs), from which we sketch a reflection on what a hybrid urbanism could look like. Examples suggest that the resulting electricity configurations are far from always inclusive. Furthermore, conceiving a hybrid urbanism is compounded by the fact that, for both public authorities and urban dwellers, the dominant imaginary remains tied to the network and hinders any ambitious policy on heterogeneity.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Environment; Geography; Sociology and Social Policy; Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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