LeidenASA Workshop: Tracing African Infrastructures. From Colonial Grand Schemes to Contemporary Mega-Projects

How can the development of mega-projects and large-scale infrastructure help us understand the emergence of new forms of governance as well as changing ideas and practices related to citizenship across Africa? In recent years, governments from Morocco to Nigeria, and from Kenya to Cameroon have embarked on a series of ambitious billion-euro projects to overhaul their countries’ urban infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. With the help of global as well as regional investors and foreign technical experts, a host of spectacular ‘mega-projects’ aims to radically transform natural, economic, and social landscapes.

Knowledge about the growing phenomenon of ‘mega-projects’ and the link to local socio-economic issues remains not only limited but also severely under-theorized. While previous infrastructure projects across Africa were built as part of post-colonial, nationalist and early modernisation agendas, current mega-projects appear to signal different political imaginings and global ambitions based on the promise of ‘frictionless mobility’ and the intensification and spatial concentration of power and capital. However, such comparable urban transformations have been too frequently addressed in isolation from each other.

This workshop brings together colleagues working in different national contexts across the African continent to reflect together on the common challenges and divergent approaches to such accelerating phenomena. Based on ongoing research, the participants will also consider the historical genealogies of technological, technocratic, cultural and political ideas driving current mega-infrastructure and urban development in the regions where we work.

This workshop is organized in the framework of Dr Cristiana Strava's LeidenASA research leave.

Programme

     13.00
Introduction by convener, Cristiana Strava (LIAS)
Speaker: Sanae Aljem (Morocco) The governance of mega projects in Casablanca
Speaker: Lahcen Ameziane (Morocco) Mega-projects in the cities of Morocco: Discontinuous power of State and challenges of exclusion and fragility 

15.15  
Coffee/ tea break

15.30  
Speaker: Agnieszka Kazimierczuk (ASCL) The African Wind-mine: setting up the largest wind farm in Africa
Speaker: Prince K. Guma (Utrecht) New Directions in the Study of Infrastructure in African Cities: The Promise of Digital Technologies

17.30
Concluding remarks