Infrastructure Globalities: Emerging Practices at the African Frontier

Abstract

This chapter sets the scene for Africa’s Global Infrastructures by introducing the transformations occurring in transnational governance derived from Africa’s South–South relations. The chapter first examines the growing role of Global South companies and investments across the continent, specifically through large-scale economic infrastructures financed, built, or operated by Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian firms. It then introduces the book’s three key methodological entry points: (1) “frontier zones” as sites that integrate expanding circuits of capital and transnational relations through multiple socio-material entanglements; (2) “practices” as a lens to closely examine the individuals and their doings involved in implementing and contesting the everyday governance of large-scale investments; and (3) “globalities” to capture the multiplicity of globally circulating technologies and practices, how they intertwine and transform. Lastly, it outlines the empirical and theoretical contributions of the chapters, which cohere around three thematic sections: Beyond Models, Contestations, and Everyday Entanglements.