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ABSTRACT
The past half-decade has seen a resurgence of dam building in Africa, a controversial development after decades of critique exposing the environmental, economic, and social costs of such projects. Dams have been imagined as symbols of modernity and as keys to national economic development, giving them such status that potential negatives get overlooked. This paper sets out to investigate the implementation of a particular dam built in this new resurgence period. It will ask whether modernist development logics are being repeated in the construction process, causing the social and environmental costs documented in past dam construction. This paper focuses on the Nyabarongo Dam in Rwanda, a country whose post-genocide development record and authoritarian modernist tendencies have been considerably debated. This particular case study also shows the growing role of India in Africa, as it records one of the first Indian financed and built dams on the continent. Qualitative field research found that that while construction planning and practice has enabled many locals to benefit, the dam’s construction was influenced by modernist logics of development that created detrimental, top-down practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Khagram, Dams and Development, 3, 27; for dam building statistics, Chao, Wu, and Li, “Impact of Artificial Reservoir Water Impoundment on Global Sea Level.”
2. McDonald, Bosshard, and Brewer, “Exporting Dams.”
3. As in World Commission on Dams, “Dams and Development”; or analyses Adams, Wasting the Rain; Scudder, The Future of Large Dams.
4. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism?”; Kelsall, Business, Politics and the State in Africa, chapter 5.
5. Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda, XVI–XVII.
6. Adams, Wasting the Rain; Scudder, The Future of Large Dams; McCully, Silenced Ricers; Khagram, Dams and Development.
7. Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 8, 154.
8. Shills, “Political Development of the New States”; Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth; Pye, Politics, Personality and Nation Building.
9. Scott, Seeing Like a State.
10. Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 3.
11. Ibid., 3–5.
12. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine.
13. Scott, Seeing Like a State, Chapter 7 on Tanzania and Chapter 4 on cities.
14. Soares de Oliviera, Magnificent and Beggar Land, particularly Chapter 1.
15. Parsons, The System of Modern Societies and Frank, On Capitalist Underdevelopment.
16. Power, The Companion to Development Studies, 73–4; Peet, Theories of Development, 103–4; Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 2–5.
17. Adams, Wasting the Rain, 14.
18. Tischler, Light and Power in a Multiracial Nation, 2.
19. Everard, Hydropolitics of Dams, 60.
20. Ibid., 12.
21. Power, Mohan, and Tan-Mullins, China’s Natural Resource Diplomacy, 213, 150; Hensengerth, “Chinese Hydropower Companies.”
22. Verhoeven, “The Politics of African Energy Development,” 10–12.
23. McDonald, Bosshard, and Brewer, “Exporting Dams.”
24. Adams, Wasting the Rain; Everard, Hydropolitics of Dams; Khagram, Dams and Development; McCully, Silenced Ricers; Scudder, The Future of Large Dam; Singh, The Taming of the Waters.
25. On sedimentation, see Khagram, Dams and Development, 14; McCully, Silenced Ricers, 107–12; on salinization, see Adams, Wasting the Rain, 191, Chapter 7.
26. Isaacman and Isaacman, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development, 5, worker deaths described in Chapter 3.
27. Tischler, Light and Power in a Multiracial Nation, 172.
28. Scott, Seeing Like a State, Chapter 9.
29. Chambers, Rural Development; Whose Reality Counts?, XV, 129.
30. Verhoeven, “Dams are Development”; Blue or Black Gold?; The Politics of African Energy Development.
31. Abbink, “Dam Controversies”; Avery, What Future for Lake Turkana, citing a halving of the lake 13, 34; Fong, A Cascade of Development on the Omo River.
32. Jones, “Between Pyongyoung and Singapore.”
33. Ibid., 232.
34. Ansoms and Rostagnob, “Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Halfway Through.”
35. World Bank, Rwanda Economic Update (2013), V.
36. World Bank, Rwanda Economic Update (2015), 24.
37. World Bank, Rwanda Economic Update (2015), V.
38. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2014.
39. Clark, The Gacaca Courts; Clark and Kaufman, After Genocide.
40. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism?”; Kelsall, Business, Politics and the State in Africa, Chapter 5.
41. For example, Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda.
42. See Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Chapters 2 and 5.
43. Ansoms, “Re-engineering Rural Society”; Ansoms and Rostagnob, “Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Halfway Through”; Huggins, “The Presidential Land Commission.”
44. Newberry, “High Modernism at Ground Level,” 229–35.
45. Ingelaere, “The Ruler’s Drum and the People’s Shout,” 73–4.
46. Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Vision 2020.
47. Power, Enlightenment and the Era of Modernity, 73–4.
48. Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Rwanda Vision 2020.
49. Baringanire, Malik, and Banerjee, Scaling Up Access to Electricity: The Case of Rwanda.
50. Ministry of Infrastructure, Presentation at the Africa Energy Forum.
51. Economic Consulting Associates, Electricity Tariff Study.
52. Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda, introduction, conclusion, Chapter 6; on rural development; Ansoms, “Rwanda’s Post-Genocide Economic Reconstruction”; Ansoms, “Large-Scale Land Deals.”
53. Kagame Speech at the Inauguration of the Nyabarongo Dam, March 6th 2015, translation by Valens Rutazihana.
54. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth.
55. Verhoeven, “Dams are Development,” 121–2.
56. Interviews with official in May and June, 2015.
57. Scoones, “Livelihoods Perspective and Rural Development,” 175.
58. World Commission on Dams, “Dams for Development.”
59. See Everard, Hydropolitics of Dams, 33–5. Citing the locally extinct Hilsa fish because a dam preventing migration.
60. Adams, Wasting the Rain, 144–5.
61. Rwandan Development Board, Birding.
62. Described by on-site ministry official and supervising contractor.
63. Quote from Field Notes.
64. Interviewee 8C.
65. Eg. Interviewee 8B described his brother benefiting by now owning a better house and more fertile land.
66. Quote from Field Notes.
67. Reported in field diary.
68. Verhoeven, “Dams are Development,” 137.
69. From interview notes with overseeing official.
70. New Incomes indirectly employed people in carpentry and house construction.
71. Quote from Field Notes.
72. Quote from Field Notes.
73. Scott, Seeing Like a State, Chapter 9.
74. Quote from Field Notes.
75. Isaccman and Isaccman, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development, 73–87.
76. Tischler, Light and Power in a Multiracial Nation, 92–213.
77. Mohan, “Beyond the Enclave,” 1261–1262.
78. Quote from Field Notes.
79. Verhoeven, “Dams Are Development,” 120.
80. Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, “Developmental Patrimonialism?”; Kelsall Business, Politics and the State in Africa, Chapter 5.
81. Straus and Waldorf, “Introduction.”
82. Newberry, “High Modernism at Ground Level,” 229–35.
83. Chemouni, “Explaining the Design of the Rwandan Decentralization.”
84. Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Vision 2020.
85. Reyntjens, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda, 97.