Abstract
Megaprojects are returning to play a key role in the transformation of rural Africa, despite controversies over their outcome. While some view them as promising tools for a ‘big push’ of modernization, others criticize their multiple adverse effects and risk of failure. Against this backdrop, the paper revisits earlier concepts that have explained megaproject failures by referring to problems of managerial complexity and the logics of state-led development. Taking recent examples from Kenya, the paper argues for a more differentiated approach, considering the symbolic role infrastructure megaprojects play in future-oriented development politics as objects of imagination, vision, and hope. We propose to explain the outcomes of megaprojects by focusing on the ‘politics of aspiration’, which unfold at the intersection between different actors and scales. The paper gives an overview of large infrastructure projects in Kenya and places them in the context of the country´s national development agenda ‘Vision 2030′. It identifies the relevant actors and investigates how controversial aspirations, interests and foreign influences play out on the ground. The paper concludes by describing megaproject development as future making, driven by the mobilizing power of the ‘politics of aspiration’. The analysis of megaprojects should consider not only material outcomes but also their symbolic dimension for desirable futures.
Highlights
Africa is currently witnessing an unprecedented boom of investments in large infrastructure projects, commonly referred to as megaprojects
The resurrection of megaprojects is hard to understand in so far as large-scale projects have long been criticized for notorious under-performance and cost overrides, a phenomenon described as the ‘megaprojects paradox’ (Flyvbjerg et al 2003)
We propose to consider megaproject development as part of the ‘politics of aspiration’, in which hope is produced and performed in public debates, political negotiations, and planning processes
Summary
Africa is currently witnessing an unprecedented boom of investments in large infrastructure projects, commonly referred to as megaprojects. Railways, airports, deepwater harbours, power lines, dams and irrigation schemes are mushrooming all over the continent Megaproject development, as it seems, is implemented with the force of bulldozers, cutting corridors of economic growth into rural hinterlands and pushing the frontiers of modernization towards the margins. The resurrection of megaprojects is hard to understand in so far as large-scale projects have long been criticized for notorious under-performance and cost overrides, a phenomenon described as the ‘megaprojects paradox’ (Flyvbjerg et al 2003) Against this backdrop, the question arises as to how we can explain the renewed fascination for ‘thinking big’ in spatial development, and the often rather meagre outcomes of megaprojects. We will come back to the question formulated in the title of this paper by looking at the relationship between the politics of aspiration and the outcome of such megaprojects
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