Building on the ruins of empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya

Abstract

This article explores colonial (dis-)continuities between the planned Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) development corridor and the Uganda Railway (UR). The historical approach to infrastructure studies highlights the effects of large-scale infrastructures beyond their immediate material impact, and reveals their potential power to structure mobilities, historicities and politics of scale. With reference to relational theories, it is argued that the two projects gain their respective significance not only through their ability to connect distant places, but also by blocking and severing other competing ways of being mobile. Particularly, both infrastructure projects create technologies enabling easier and faster flow of capital and commodities but limit previously prevalent mobilities practised by caravans and semi-nomadic people in the region. Both projects, furthermore, produce particular ways of remembering the past and anticipating the future. The article identifies a major discontinuity in the politics of scale they respectively imply: while the UR aimed at producing a clear scalar hierarchy between empire and colony, the LAPSSET alleges to dissolve hard boundaries between scalar instances. This article is based on qualitative data collected during fieldwork along the proposed route of the LAPSSET corridor, as well as archive work regarding the UR.

Keywords:

• politics of scale
• infrastructure
• development
• colonialism
• new mobilities paradigm

Acknowledgements

I thank Swati, Michael, Jan, Alexandra, Fredrik and Johan for their feedback. I am particularly grateful to April for her extensive comments and general train-nerdage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 All names of interviewees have been changed.

2 The final report of the UR Committee in 1903 showed that ‘of a total of 31,983 coolies imported from India […] 6,454 had been invalided and 2,493 had died in East Africa’ (Hill 1949, p. 240).

3 http://web.archive.org/web/20141120182521/http://www.lapsset.go.ke

4 The distinction between these different practices is significant, but in the context of this text, I venture to collapse the aspect of hope implied by his understanding of aspiration, and speculation based on past experiences implied by his use of anticipation, into one term.

5 Furthermore, it was also clear that if Britain didn’t occupy this transport monopoly, her rivals would: ‘If you do not establish that communication, Germany will do so’, Mr. Curzon, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, stated bluntly (1896, quoted in Hill 1949, p. 137).

6 http://www.lapsset.go.ke/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johannes Theodor Aalders

Johannes Theodor Aalders is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Social Science at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. He holds degrees in Human Geography (BA, Bayreuth, Germany) and Environmental Studies (MSc, Lund, Sweden). His main research interests include the politics of scale, relational space, Derrida’s hauntology, walking as an ethnographic method, environmental justice, climate change, critical animal studies and Kenya’s oil infrastructure.