For this assignment, you will write a 2 page (singled spaced) policy brief evaluating the current policy approach to infrastructure of a particular kind in a chosen city, and making rec

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12317

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© 2016 urban research publications limited

— DISRUPTED INFRASTRUCTURES: An Urban Political Ecology of Interrupted Electricity in Accra

jonathan silver

Abstract Cities in the global South are often considered to be in the midst of infrastructural

breakdown, and characterized as either lacking networked services or as suffering from ongoing disruption and sometimes failure. This article focuses on the electricity network of Accra to examine the series of socio-natural processes that produce this ongoing disrup- tion and to explore the power relations of networked systems in the city. It focuses on the production of disruption through the analytical lens of urban political ecology, in order to show how such a framework can be utilized to interrogate energy geographies. The article begins by describing what happens when the lights go out and the flow of electricity is inter- rupted across Accra in order to connect a series of socio-natural processes that contribute to the ongoing network disruption and interruption. The article establishes the effect of his- torical infrastructural governance, greenhouse gas emissions, flows of international capi- tal, water and drought in northern Ghana, as well as urban sprawl, slum urbanism and rising energy demand in the city, to illustrate the fundamentally unequal and politicized socio-natures of these disrupted infrastructural processes.

Introduction The electricity network in Accra, one of West Africa’s fastest-growing metro-

politan regions, powers much of the daily lives of the city’s residents. The maze of wires, power plants, substations and pylons together form a key constituent of Accra’s infra- structure, helping to sustain, through socio-natural transformation, urban life in Ghana’s capital. Infrastructure systems are important not only, as Graham (2010: 1) suggests, as the ‘fundamental background to modern everyday life’ but as Gandy (2005:28) argues, they ‘can be conceptualized as a series of interconnecting life-support systems’ through the flows of essential urban services they enable. Yet, disruption of Accra’s electricity network occurs regularly, sometimes without warning, but often also in the form of announced load-shedding by the Electric Company of Ghana (ECG). The effects of infrastructure disruption vary across the city, resulting in multiple difficulties for and a plethora of responses from urban dwellers, often based on socio-economic status. Fre- quent ‘lights-out’ events present an ongoing series of disruptions that reveal important historical and contemporary urban geographies of infrastructure in the city.

This article seeks to politicize the electricity network of the city and reveal the power relations between various actors across this infrastructure system through an analysis of the processes by which disruption is produced and responded to across Accra. It argues that the ongoing interruption experienced across the city is produced by the historical development of the electricity network within and beyond Accra, which has resulted in a fragmented, splintered infrastructure that reinforces urban inequalities. It suggests that this urban energy history leaves Accra vulnerable to emergent multiscalar socio-natural processes that intersect with the electricity network. First, I consider the effects of the hydro-electric production facility constructed at Akosombo Dam and the intersection thereof with the increasing climate change in the Sahel region, resulting in

This research, part of a wider project led by Professor Harriet Bulkeley and entitled ‘Urban Transitions: Climate Change, Global Cities, and the Transformation of Socio-technical Networks’, was funded by an ESRC grant (award number RES-066-27-0002).

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significantly reduced water flow. Secondly, the article looks at the links between neo- liberal governance of urban land, growing prosperity and new urbanization patterns that have led to increased energy demand across the sprawling city. However, the focus on these two processes in this article does not suggest that these are the only aspects that shape urban electricity politics in Accra. Rather, these have been chosen to demonstrate the socio-natures of the network and identify the multiscalar actors involved within and beyond the city in disruption.

Taken together, the actions of various social interest groups involved in the his- torical production of the energy network and new forms of (socio-natural) urbanization processes help to outline the politicized nature of disruption in Accra. This politiciza- tion is further articulated by examining the responses to interruptions in the flows of electricity across the city by various social interest groups. The article argues that power relationships between the upper-middle class/elites and the urban poor are reflected and reinforced by the ability of these groups to navigate disruption through access to various forms of technology and new forms of energy-secure urbanism. Analysis of dis- ruptions helps to identify the power relations in contemporary Accra and the emergent urban energy geographies of the city. The article thus focuses on examining the series of multiscalar socio-natural processes leading to disruption, how they become entwined at the urban scale with different actors and the multiple ways in which they can be understood as politicizing Accra’s electricity network.

The article draws on studies in urban political ecology (UPE) that seek to exam ine the metabolic natures of infrastructures (Swyngedouw, 2004; Loftus, 2006; Lawhon, 2013). This field of literature argues that metabolic flows produce and shape urbaniza tion, which reflects and reproduces configurations of power and mediates socio-environmental relations. Such an approach thus provides a way for researchers to politicize these urban networks by elucidating the contested and unequal geographies of infrastructure conditions. The article assesses how infrastructural disruption can be understood through the notion of metabolism and reflects on the usefulness of this concept in seeking to better understand the infrastructural dynamics of Accra. It draws on the literature to examine how socio-natural processes of urbanization are enabled through the infrastructures of the city, in order to analyse the political and contested nature of these spaces, resource flows and material configurations, while also consid- ering the contexts through which the city is shaped. Furthermore, the article seeks to show how flows of electricity play a crucial role in mediating the present and future of cities, and assesses how UPE can contribute to critical understandings of urban energy geographies, which have been approached predominantly through the socio-technical transitions literature. Finally, the article seeks to contribute to a developing, yet still limited field of UPE studies in urban Africa, as well as to the wider community of infra- structure studies, by illustrating how an analysis of disrupted electricity infrastructure can expand our understanding of unequal production of cities across the region.

In the section that follows this one, I provide an overview of UPE to show how the field and specifically the use of the concept of metabolism can provide an important basis for politicizing urban electricity networks. The third section provides a historical analysis of the development of the electricity network within and beyond Accra to show how various periods of (urban) energy governance shape particular infrastructure geographies to leave the system vulnerable to disruption. Section four argues that the frequent interruptions in electricity flows, coupled with the historical production of the network, are the result of an over-reliance on hydro-power, as climate change affects water supply and leads to new forms of energy-intensive urbanization that are linked to changes in urban form and to the growing wealth of some sectors of society. Section five seeks to examine the emerging responses to disruption in Accra across urban-poor and upper-middle class/elite spaces of the city, arguing that these display new forms

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of fragmentation and inequality. The article concludes by reflecting on the politicized nature of the urbanization of electricity through the socio-natural processes generating disruption and the actors implicated in such dynamics.

Researching infrastructure disruption — Urban political ecology

Whilst an ever-broadening literature on urban infrastructures generates multi- ple pathways for examining urban systems, the field of UPE explicitly focuses on the socio-natural power relations that are (re)configured through infrastructural processes to identify the multiple social interest groups connected to these dynamics. As Swynge- douw (2004: 4) suggests when tracing the metabolism of water in Guayaquil, which could also apply to energy, this is ‘part and parcel of the political economy of power that gives structure and coherence to the urban fabric’. A UPE analysis via a historical materialist perspective focuses on the metabolic production of socio-natural land scapes (Smith, 1984; Castree, 2001). The notion of socio-material flows shapes much of the UPE literature that has engaged with urban infrastructure (Keil, 2003; 2005; Swyngedouw, 2004; 2006). Across the field of UPE, urbanization is understood as the transforma tion of nature through processes of capital accumulation, conceptually brought together by the notion of urban metabolism, which Swyngedouw (2006: 106) describes as ‘a series of interconnected heterogeneous (human and non-human) and dynamic but contested and contestable processes of continuous quantitative and qualitative transformations that re-arranges humans and non-humans in new and often unexpected ways’.

Socio-natural processes constitute the material (re)production of the city; they are a combination of the social relations of production and the transformation of nature, and linked to capital flows from the local to the transnational (Swyngedouw, 2004). Noth- ing lies outside of these transformations and the city is a part of these huge networks that span across the local through to the global, incorporating human and non-human actants, which include everything from capital to the wires themselves to the flows of electricity to communications on energy policy. The use of this UPE understanding of socio-natural urbanization foregrounds the importance of infrastructure systems in seek ing to examine cities and the socio-environmental relations that are embedded across these ever-shifting spaces. To approach the urban from this perspective means to recognize that infrastructure systems form a central consideration in these circulatory processes of capital accumulation and the transformation of nature as constituent ele- ments of the metabolic process, as opposed to static systems or technical ‘things’.

Much of the UPE literature has thus taken urban infrastructures as point of depar- ture in seeking to understand how capital accumulation shapes the city and the social relations that are created, reflected and reinforced (Zimmer, 2010; Lawhon et al., 2014; cf. Gandy, 2004; Heynen, 2006; Loftus, 2006). This suggests that urban infrastructures act as conduits, circuits and sites for processes of socio-natural transformation (Heynen et al., 2006). Thus, like the waterscape for Loftus (2007: 49), the urban electricity net- work in Accra ‘should be understood as a produced socio-natural entity. It is produced directly through the urbanization of nature’. From this perspective, electricity networks are not only a series of socio-natural circulations but also make possible other metabolic flows, implicating such networked systems in shaping and mediating the urban. This dual role is particularly important in considering the geographies of infrastructure and how such segregated, fragmented and fractured networks may reflect and reinforce configurations of power.

This socio-natural framing generates a range of implications for developing an analysis of infrastructure disruption. The use of electricity disruption as entry point sug- gests a need to not only trace and make visible, but, more importantly, to centre on the contested and politicized nature of infrastructure systems (Swyngedouw, 2004). It is imperative to consider how these urban flows shape the city and its networked

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sys tems and to look at the important structuring role these processes play in connect- ing, composing, fragmenting, enlarging and renewing wider processes of urbanization across the city (Kaika, 2005).

In UPE, there is a dearth of studies on energy that focus on the electricity  net works of cities. While water has been central to the development of the field (Swynge douw, 2004; Loftus, 2006), work on urban energy infrastructures, particularly electricity, tend to be interrogated through studies that have mobilized a socio-technical transitions approach (Rohracher, 2009; Jaglin, 2014; Mouton, 2014). Yet electricity is arguably as important as water when it comes to shaping urbanization processes, and more attention needs to be given to a UPE analysis of these resource flows across and beyond urban regions. The application of insights developed through work on water to electricity can offer a complimentary perspective to understanding the socio-natural production of cities as a series of contested processes. Furthermore, despite much work in the global South, there are only a limited number of studies of African cities (Loftus, 2006; Njeru, 2006; Lawhon, 2013) across the literature that prompt thought about the potential of UPE to interrogate the emergent urbanization dynamics of this region and how this might contribute to urban studies of cities such as Accra.

— An urban political ecology of disruption Lack of networked provision, disrupted services and potential fragmentation

constitute an ongoing series of visible energy issues across cities, affecting service users and urban dwellers who interact with the electricity system. Infrastructural geographies of disruption, disrepair and failure are well documented generally (Graham, 2010) and particularly across the global South (Davis, 2006; Pieterse, 2008; McFarlane, 2010). A UPE analysis can mobilize such disruption to provide a window on wider multiscalar flows that, importantly, also reveal the inequalities of interruptions in circulations of urban resources (McFarlane, 2010). As Graham (2010: 3) suggests, ‘infrastructural disrup- tions provide important heuristic devices or learning opportunities through which critical social science can excavate the politics of urban life, technology or infrastructure’.

This literature on disruption generates three key areas of examination when understood through a UPE approach. First, it provides an understanding of the historical governance of infrastructure (Kooy and Bakker, 2008) and the networked conditions that shape disruption. Secondly, it traces the metabolism of disruption, revealing the multiscalar socio-natural processes generating such infrastructural episodes. Thirdly, it examines the ways in which a range of actors are responding to and addressing ongo- ing disruption, based on McFarlane and Rutherford’s (2008: 368) assertion that ‘the politics underpinning urban infrastructural transformation are rarely more evident or visible than in times of crisis or rupture’. A focus on the disruption of flows of electricity can thus be mobilized as a window in order to trace and reveal the multiscalar processes that shape uneven energyscapes and interrogate the role of different actors implicated in such inequalities.

— Methodology Ethnographic research was conducted in Accra between 2010 and 2011. A number

of different methods were used to draw together a multiscalar analysis of disrupted electricity infrastructure. This included around 25 semi-structured interviews with a wide range of actors involved in energy and urban governance, including national and local policymakers, utility-company representatives, built-environment professionals, civil-society actors and others. Whilst the questions put to each of these actors differed, the aim of the interviews was to establish a metabolic narrative revealing the extent to which individuals, organizations and relations structured the production of energy dis- rup tion and the response. Alongside the interviews, a series of workshops involving  par ticipant observation were held, as well as a survey of 35 households of residents in

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the low-income networked neighbourhood of Ga Mashie, in order to understand how these dynamics dialectically unfolded in urban poor areas (see Silver, 2014). In addi- tion, a range of sites were visited, including Akosombo Dam, resettlement villages, new middle-class residential developments and the arid Sahel region. This article draws on the data collected and produced through these different methods to show the multiple scales and spaces with which an analysis of infrastructures needs to engage. It has been supported by ongoing research through the SAMSET project, an investigation into urban energy issues that began in 2014 in order to support municipalities in Ghana in shaping sustainable energy transitions.

The historical production of the network The electricity network of Accra and the wider geographies involved in flows of

energy into the city are produced through the overlapping histories of Accra’s  infra- structure (Chalfin, 2010) that shape a highly localized energyscape of wider global  modal ities of infrastructure governance. This history incorporates many actors, includ- ing the colonial authorities, the post-independence administrations of the Ghanaian government and the utility companies involved in electricity generation, distribution and supply, together with international institutions such as the World Bank.

— Colonial infrastructures Colonial-era infrastructure systems in Accra have much in common with those

in other urban areas across Africa. Accra emerged within the wider context of resource extraction, slavery and the necessity for an administrative apparatus to manage the socio- natural flows of humans, precious metals, cocoa, and so forth; it grew through the capi- tal it generated as a colonial node in the global imperial infrastructures of exploita tion and subjugation. Accra’s history is predicated on the transformation of these natures, via the ongoing power of the colonial authorities, into flows of capital that were partly reinvested in the growing built environment, leading to further accumulation through rents, services and tariffs. At the same time, the British colonizers ignored the infra- structure needs of non-Europeans. As Myers (2006: 294) explains about Lusaka, ‘for the most part urban authorities and European residents simply ignored develop ments in the African part of town’. Accra is no exception, and this lack of attention was jus- tified through various discourses of imperial and racial supremacy. Thus, the city is representative of the common yet differentially unfolding colonial governance prac- tices of urban areas in Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For instance, the 1878 Gold Coast Towns Police and Health Ordinance created a new legisla- tive tool for the authorities with the objective of empowering the governor to deal with new urban flows such as waste and sanitation (Hess, 2000). Through the Town Council Ordinance the colonial authorities sought to develop new urban systems through the introduction of the first energy infrastructures in the form of street lighting (paraffin lights) and the construction of an integrated water network, from 1885, which began with the building of a reservoir.

The development of these forms of resource flows continued through the estab- lishment of committees set up to develop infrastructural systems across a range of urban services, including water supply, sanitation and lighting (Dickson, 1969). By 1885 an increasingly panicked colonial authority explicitly racialized concerns about the socio- environmental conditions of the city, particularly the spread of disease, which led to the planning and creation of a new European extension called Victoriaborg. Established well awa

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