Infrastructure and the Politics of African State Agency: Shaping the Belt and Road Initiative in East Africa

Abstract

Infrastructure development has experienced a political renaissance in Africa and is again at the centre of national, regional, and continental development agendas. At the same time, China has been identified by African policy-makers as a particularly suitable strategic partner. As infrastructure has become a main pillar of Sino-African cooperation, there has been growing analytical interest on the role of African actors in shaping the terms and conditions and, by extension, the implementation of infrastructure projects with Chinese participation. This follows a more general African “agency turn” in China–Africa studies, which has shifted the research focus on the myriad ways in which African state and non-state actors shape the continent’s engagements with China. This article is situated within this growing body of literature and explores different forms of an African state agency in the context of Tanzania’s planned Bagamoyo port, Ethiopia’s Adama wind farms, and Kenya’s Lamu port. We posit a non-reductionist and social-relational ontology of the (African) state which sees the state as a multifaceted and multi-scalar institutional ensemble. We show that the extent and forms of state agencies exerted are inherently interrelated with and, thus, highly contingent upon concrete institutional, economic, political, and bureaucratic contexts in which African state actors are firmly embedded. In doing so, we make the case for a context-sensitive analysis of various spheres of a state agency in particular conjunctures of Sino-African engagement.

Volume 26, Número 1

“…Nas duas últimas décadas, houve a promoção de investimentos em produção de infraestruturas em grande escala, para estimular o crescimento econômico e melhorar a competitividade do país (HUDALAH; TALITHA; LESTARI, 2022; CHIYEMURA; GAMBINO; ZAJONTZ, 2022;LESUTIS, 2021LESUTIS, , 2022. Tudo isso com o objetivo de promover a conectividade planetária, por meio de redes logísticas, técnicas e econômicas de fluxos globais de capital (LESUTIS, 2021).…”

Expansão e territorialização de infraestruturas portuárias no Brasil e na Amazônia Legal (1993 a 2022)

“…Nas duas últimas décadas, houve a promoção de investimentos em produção de infraestruturas em grande escala, para estimular o crescimento econômico e melhorar a competitividade do país (HUDALAH; TALITHA; LESTARI, 2022;CHIYEMURA;ZAJONTZ, 2022;LESUTIS, 2021LESUTIS, , 2022. Tudo isso com o objetivo de promover a conectividade planetária, por meio de redes logísticas, técnicas e econômicas de fluxos globais de capital (LESUTIS, 2021).…”

Improvised Hybridity in the “Fixing” of Chinese Infrastructure Capital: The Case of Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway

“…Other large‐scale infrastructure projects in Kenya financed by the Exim Bank, including the Thika Superhighway (Manji 2015), or Lamu Port (Chiyemura et al. 2022), for instance, have been implemented with the same model and fulfil similar functions in China's spatial fix. In the following section, we turn to practices of CRBC—the contracted SOE of the Kenyan SGR—exploring how its activities have been shaped by the hybrid nature of China's state capitalism, as well as how these hybrid actors “improvise” their responses to changing political priorities in East Africa.…”