At the end of World War II the United Nations Trust Territories Tanganyika experienced a period of steady economic growth fueled by high demand for sisal and high commodity prices. In this period, colonial administration shifted from an extractive economic policy to a concept of integrated social-economic development. The centralized 1946 Colonial Development and Welfare Act also increasingly emphasized improving “native development” and “social welfare” as a part of broader economic considerations. In the course of this paradigm shift, electricity’s role for economic development was redefined.
In fact, electricity’s promise as a power source for industrial development had already been a main driver for the first electricity projects of the African continent. As in Europe and North America electrification began with isolated small scale generators. Generation technologies ranged from steam driven turbines, fuelled by gas, wood or coal, and diesel engines, to run-of-the river (non-storage) hydroelectric systems.[1] In the commercial sector, electricity generators and small-scale power plants were the most effective form of power for machinery in farms/plantations, industries and railroads. Even though the potentials of large African hydroelectric plants had fascinated colonial planners since the turn of the twentieth century, the generation structure remained highly decentralized until the 1920ies. At that time, technological advances in long-distance transmission had centralized generation made economically more viable and opened up prospects of mineral exploitation with cheap electricity from hydropower. Colonial governments all over the continent commissioned hydropower surveys and started with the construction of large dams. An overview of Kat B. Showers shows a sharp increase in dam numbers from the 1950s, among them huge dams like the Kariba dam in British Rhodesia, which was closed in 1959. The era of large-scale African hydroelectricity had begun and lasted after independence reaching its zenith in the 1980s.[2]
This era was associated with the emergence of centralized power models, which dominate the continent until today. This transition of African electricity systems was closely interrelated with the rise of the concept of the interventionist development state. This chapter therefore starts with a review of literature on post-Second World War development discourses and practices. A range of aspects discussed in these studies are relevant for the fundamental changes of energy systems in Africa, for example the role of experts, science and technology and the continuities of colonial and post-colonial development.[3] The second part provides an overview of the knowledge base and existing paradigms in scientific debates on electricity systems in the West and theories about their role in shaping the material infrastructures. The third part looks at the late- and postcolonial authoritarian state, turning the technological and scientific knowledge into large-scale development schemes, following an ideology which James Scott has conceptualized and criticised as “high modernism”. Consequently, the fourth part looks at the role of electricity in these development agenda, and its characteristics as a form of power, which makes it particularly attractive for high modernists. At the example of the well-documented history of hydropower construction in Tanzania the fifth part looks the discrepancies and inconsistencies between energy and development policy in post-independence Tanzania.
Science, technology and the ideology of development
One of the most interesting contributions to the current historical debate on development in late- and post-colonial Africa is Joseph Morgan Hodges work Triumph of the Expert. Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism. [4] At the example of agricultural development and with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Hodges shows how “state-centred ideologies and development structures” triumphed and “remained largely intact even after the transfer of formal colonial power. Hand in hand with this was the depoliticization of poverty and power achieved by recasting social and economic problems as technical ones that could be fixed by rational planning and expert knowledge”.[5]
In his article on economic knowledge in the East-African decolonization, Daniel Speich describes, how a mechanistic conception of economic development assumed the character of a salvation promise in the states late- and postcolonial world.[6] Having been abstracted from the historical experience of the industrialized West, this knowledge was particularly attractive for the nationalists of the emerging “Third World” as it reduced the diverse contingencies and uncertainties of decolonization and opened up a future horizon for their daily operations. They however ignored the constructive character of economic abstraction, which had never been questioned by economists themselves, using the promise of an “automatism for development” as a political resource.[7] Speich emphasizes that the availability of this economic knowledge base itself had a historical impact. In the context of postcolonial states it created novel constellations which sometimes even undermined its goal of reproducing socio-economic change in the predicted way.
Learning from the West? The discoursive and material shaping of electricity infrastructures in Europe and North America
A similarly comprehensive study on the perception and application of the Western scientific knowledge on electrical engineering and the economics of electricity systems in Subsahara Africa remains a desideratum. In historical studies on hydropower constructions in Africa, which will be discussed more in detail further below, other areas of expertise such as hydrology receive most attention. At the time when electricity started to play a major role in models for the economic modernization of the colonies in Africa, a specific understanding of energy systems was well established in academia in the industrialized West, including the notion of the immanent nature of its centralized topology and the conception of electricity markets as natural monopolies. In his extensive study on the emergence of “Elektrizitätswirtschaftslehre” as an autonomous field of study in Germany, Norbert Gilson has argued that the development of concepts for the economic analysis of electricity supply was closely interlinked with the factual construction of a centralized supply via superpower stations (Großkraftversorgung).[8] Economic analyses were anchored in the instruction of electrical engineers and a powerful pressure group made up from political institutions, large-scale electro-industry and financial capital had their share in establishing a “dogma of the economic superiority” of the centralized power model in academia.[9]
It was this supposedly objective category of technical-economic rationality, which made not only contemporary planners and politicians believe that centralized generation was an inherent necessity for efficient electricity systems. It also lead an engineering-oriented school of historians of technology to interpret the electrification of Germany as a unquestionable narrative of success and progress.[10] More recent studies, such as the one of Bernhard Stier have challenged that view and shown that alternatives existed in regard to generation technologies as well as the regulatory framework. The concept of decentralized cogeneration of heat and electricity was discussed at an early stage of German electrification as an option with a higher overall efficiency than centralized single-purpose electricity generation. And despite being accused of being ineffectively splintered, the network of mostly municipally owned plants in the state of Württemberg provided a “decentralized and customer-oriented, cost-effective and democratically controlled power supply”.[11] In the end, cogeneration was dismissed only because of contempory economists and engineers narrow focus on pure electricity generation as well as their neglect of thermal-economic and ecological aspects and Württembergs decentralized supply model fell victim to a drastic centralization policy of National Socialism.
What role do these discourses play in the material design of electricity infrastructures? Inspired by the “cultural turn” in historiography, research on the history of electricity has directed its attention towards non-technical and non-economic aspects of electricity in the last 20 years. Beyond the widely accepted paradigm of the social construction of technology, recent works have looked at the history of electricity on the level of symbols and language. [12] Some authors have gone as far as to radically deconstruct all structuralist approaches. In his much discussed study on the electrification of Switzerland, David Gugerli has analyzed electrotechnical and economic discourses and has examined their role streamlining perceptions of electrification thus making them the determining factor in the process.[13] Electrification, Gugerly states his general thesis, was not at all determined by the countries hydropower potential and the absence of coal, its highly-developed capital market, the skills of its engineers or the audacity of its enrepreneurs – essentially a result of societal communication about potentials, needs and consequences of the electricity. His work has been rightfully criticized for the radicality of his thesis, but it clearly shows the relevance of discourses in shaping electricity infrastrucures and can inspire historical studies on electricity in Africa.[14]
Science and technology in modern African statecraft. The ideology of “high modernism”
In most African countries like Tanzania, the scientific debates described above had little impact on the majority of the population in the first half of the 20th century. This started to change during late colonial times, and after independence they thoroughly transformed the live of millions. This was when state officials adopted a “particularly sweeping vision of how the benefits of technical and scientific progress might be applied-usually through the state-in every field of human activity”, which James Scott calls “High modernism”. In his widely acclaimed book “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed” he examines large-scale attempts by authoritarian governments to engineer their social and agricultural environments, and develops a critique of why these attempts missed their intended goals.[15] His book provides an interesting interpretational framework how technology and science were linked to statecraft in the
Scott argues “that the most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements”. First, the administrative ordering of nature and society by simplification and aggregation of facts to make them “legible” to central authorities. This “state simplification” manipulated complex circumstances into simplified and aggregated data, often missing out vital aspects of the situation. The second was a “high-modernist ideology” which Scott defines as “a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws”. When these two elements are combined and joined by a third one, an authoritaritarian state, they can become lethal – expecially when a “prostrate civil society”, the forth element, lacks the ability to resist these governments’ plans.[16]
On the African continent, British mandated Tanganyika proved to be one of the most fertile grounds for the high modernist ideology. Beginning during World War II and especially after it the British Colonial Regime turned to planning large-scale agricultural development projects and mobilizing the necessary labour. The most ambitious was the gigantic groundnut (peanut) scheme, which failed due to its narrowly agronomic and abstract design and the planners “blind faith in machinery and large-scale operation”.[17] Scott sees these schemes as a result of the ideology of “welfare colonialism” combined with the authoritarian power inherent in colonial rule to enforce measures like resettlement and mechanization. Most leaders of the post-independence African states adopted colonialists view that economic develoment requires a strong state. In Tanzania, consequently the country’s natural, industrial, and communications resources were nationalized in the Arusha Declaration in 1967.
As a striking continuity to colonial regimes, coercion and occassionally violence continued to accompany the introduction modernising practices in post-independence African states. Tanzanias “ujamaa” villagization program in the early 1970ies sets a classical and well-documented example, how a seemingly harmless principle like community development would even under relatively benign leaders, such as Julius Nyerere, become a vehicle of repression.[18] In the course to the campaign, more than 5 million Tanzanians were resettled in villages, of which the layouts, housing designs, and local economies were planned, partly or wholly, by officials of the central government. With archival sources from local district Hubertus Büschel has recently illustrated the complex processes of social exclusion, control and punishment associated with the program.[19] Scott acknowledges however, that despite its economic and ecological failures it was undertaken largely as a development and welfare project and “not, as has often been the case, a part of a plan of punitive appropriation, ethnic cleansing or military security” (p. 223).
The aim of Nyerere’s ujamaa villages in Tanzania was not least the more efficient delivery of services, supposedly also electricity as this often cited quote of Nyerere suggests:
“And if you ask me why the government wants us to live in villages, the answer is just as simple: unless we do we shall not be able to provide ourselves with the things we need to develop our land and to raise our standard of living. We shall not be able to use tractors; we shall not be able to provide schools for our children; we shall not be able to build hospitals, or have clean drinking water; it will be quite impossible to start small village industries, and instead we shall have to go on depending on the towns for all our requirements; and if we had a plentiful supply of electric power we should never be able to connect it up to each isolated homestead.”[20]
Refering to Nyerere rethorics of a “proper village”, Scott draws a parallel with Lenin and his well documented fascination for electricity. “Little wonder that electrification and tractors, those emblems of development, were on the tip of Nyerere’s tongue as well as Lenin’s.”[21]
Electricity in High Modernism. Measuring progress in Megawatt?
Scott suggests a number of of arguments why electricity as a form of energy was particularly appealing for Lenin as for most other modernists. It is “silent, precise and well nigh visible” and it holds the promise that, once transmission lines are laid down, it delivers instantly power to wherever it are needed and in the quantity required. Grid-based electricity is centralizing, producing a visible network of transmission lines emanating from a central power station where the flow of power can be generated, distributed, and controlled. Electricity’s generation facilities and long-distance transmission lines form a powerful aesthetic of modernization.[22] In her overview on the history of electricity in Africa, Kate B. Showers remarks that “electriciy’s mercurial form and invisible transmission facilitates its conceptualization as a purely economic entity while obscuring fundamental environmental interactions, dependencies and consequences surrounding its production.”[23] In Scotts terminology, electricity was perfectly legible for the high modernist state. Progress, as to say, could now be measured in Megawatt.
Yet, Scotts detailed study of the ujamaa villages as standardized agricultural production units, gives no further indication that electricity was a crucial feature in their layout. If “Communism is Soviet Power plus the Electrification of the whole countryside”, as Lenin famously claimed, it remains to be asked what electricity was for African Socialism then? Looking at the rethorics of Tanzanian officials, the picture seems to be clear. Promises that electrical power would incite industrial growth, electrify the rapidly growing cities and reduce the import of oil, thus serving the country’s import substitution strategy.[24] Tanzania’s Second Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development asserted that “the expansion of power supplies is a necessary ingredient for such development.”[25] In fact, the situation was much more complicated. The expansion of the countries electricity infrastructure competed with other developments targets for financial as well as natural resources, for example in regard to the question if the nations rivers should be used for irrigation or hydropower generation.
Symbols of (hydroelectric) power. Large dam construction in Africa
The history of large dams in Africa is only partly one of electricity generation. The breakthrough of hydroelectricity in Africa coincided with the global dissemination of the “ideology of multipurpose river basin planning”, based on the idea of managing an entire river for human benefit – besides hydroelectric power production for example for navigation, irrigation and flood control.[26] By the 1930s, most large rivers in North America and Europe had been dammed, but it was the success of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) following its formation in 1933, which made the project “the granddaddy of all regional development projects” and inspired visions of river basin planning as a global tool for development in the 1950ies.[27]In 1956, the UN Secretary General declared that River basin development is now recognized as an essential feature of economic development”.[28]
The American model of river basin planning and technologies came also to dominate the postwar development agenda of many African colonies. For the new independent nation states large-dams remained their attractivity as symbols for power of the state to direct its own course of development.[29] The exported model of river basin planning, however, was focussed on industrial and agricultural growth, less on social or regional needs for social development. The electrification of rural areas, the creation of jobs and provision, services, and infrastructure was given low priority. The Volta River Project (VRP) in Ghana, one of the first and most prominent example for river basin planning in Africa with its 80-meter Akosombo Dam as its centerpiece, was mainly built to produce power for the processing Ghana’s bauxite deposits into aluminum. The project provided postcolonial leaders in African a example of the transference of hydropower technology to the continent and the commissioning the Akosombo Dam in 1966 was heralded as “a solid symbol in the dream of prosperity”.[30] In Subsahara Africa its generation capacity was later only surpassed by the Grand Inga hydropower project in Congo[31].
The model of river basin development entered Tanzania in the 1950ies. A collaboration between the British East African government and FAO in the Rufiji Basin Survey (1954–1961) was one of Africa’s first river basin plans.[32] The study concluded with the recommendation of the construction of a large dam at Stiegler’s Gorge. Despite planners’ enthusiasm for the project throughout the 1970ies, the plans for its construction were put aside in the 1980ies, because of the immense capital investment required lower and the increasing criticism. The attention of local planners and international funders shifted upstream to Tanzania’s second large hydropower project, the Great Ruaha Project, with its dams at Kidatu and Mtera.[33] In parallel to the planning of Stiegler’s George and encouraged by the World Bank, the Swedish Institute for Development Assistance (SIDA) began work on the Great Ruaha further upstream during the 1960s. Kidatu where constructions began in 1969 and were completed in 1980, became the first large-scale hydropower project in Tanzania and “paved the way for the Tanzanian entrance into the big dam era.”[34]
Large dams’ exposed nature has not only fascinated contemporary planners and state officials in Africa but has inspired a number of recent studies in the field of environment, as well as technology and science. Based on interviews and archival sources from international donor organizations, and development agencies, primarily the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and some private archives of experts, May-Britt Öhman has investigated Swedish hydropower constructions in Tanzania in the era of development Assistance between the 1960s-1990s, focussing on Great Ruaha power project.[35] Martin Walsh has studied the ecological impacts of the projects, the continuing drying-up of the Great Ruaha, leading to power shortages from the early 1990ies on and culminating in the mass expulsion livestock keepers and their cattle in 2006-07.[36] Another study on hydropower dams was written by Heather Hoag who looks into the controversy around the proposed damming of the Rufiji River at Stiegler’s Gorge.[37]
The well-documented history of large dams in Tanzania exemplifies the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the relationship between African socialists’ energy policy and their concept of local small-scale development. The debates around the planning, construction and impacts of hydropower projects further show how power relations between local and the different international actors changed in the context postwar shift from the bilateral colonial relationships to the multilateralism of development assistance. On a formal level, souvereignity turned these relations into one among equals; but, as Cooper has lately suggested, “independence turned entitlement into supplication”.[38] The studies on the history of large dams in Tanzania demonstrate the power and authority of scientific “objectivity” – or what was regarded as it – in the negotiations among a small subset of government officials, donors, private investors, and international consultants, who controlled and manage many of the most sensitive aspects of dam planning and construction. The authors have employed a range of theoretical concepts and terms to grasp the role of scientific and technological concepts in discoursive shaping of the centralized electricity system as it still exists today.
“Technoscientific paradigms” in hydropower development
While Swedish development assistance was often proclaimed as an export of its welfare state, May-Britt Öhman, has argued that, in the case of the Great Ruaha project, it was rather about the export of a hydropower system influenced by a Swedish “technoscientific paradigm”.[39] This paradigm had emerged in the the context exploitation of its own rivers in the countries northern territory for hydropower generation. It included the “view of territory and water as belonging to the state, free for exploitation, while disregarding and invisibilising the people living in the area as well as their use of the territory and watercourses.
The concepts of “technoscientific paradigm” and “invisibilization” will be further elaborated here.
“Money should be made to talk” – the performativity of isolated economic calculations in the debates multipurpose vs. single-purpose use of dams
The documentation of debates between international and Tanzanian institutional actors on river basin development revealed a conflict of interests regarding the conflicting purposes of large-dams. The Tanzanian government, the water authority and President Nyerere were in favour of a multipurpose projects. Drawing on the British colonial plans for agricultural development they had made irrigation an important part of the five-year plan of 1964. In contrast, the World Bank changed from supporting large-scale irrigation to supporting large-scale power production during the 1960s, relying on the opinion of international consultants who, for different reasons, had a greater interest in hydropower generation. Comparative studies, giving no space to irrigation benefits, paired with political considerations, for example the desire for independence from the former colonial power by complying with SIDA/World Bank, provided the necessary arguments for Tanzanias government to change its opinion.[40] Plans for a multipurpose project at Wami River were given up in favour for the single-purpose Great Ruaha Project. For Stiegler’s George, Kjell Havnevik has argued, that the project was “a striking example of a large-scale multipurpose project for which single purpose planning of hydropower generation was carried out.”[41]
The fact that hydroelectricity generation perfectly lends itself to the “high modernist” goal of making developent “legible”, not only for states but the international financers, gave it the decisive advantage over other development goals. Tanesco, which nationalized by the independent government in 1964, had many years been providing financial calculations regarding electricity production and the market. Similar cost-benefit calculations regarding irrigational development did not exist.[42]One contemporary consultant pointedly stated that only power generation could provide the fixed calculable values, the Worldbank needed for their economic calculations:
Money should be made to talk: each one of the parties should be made to weigh the money value of their wishes against the costs to be covered. – In this respect power see to be superior. Opinions are divided as to the relative benefits in the future, but one thing is absolutely certain: plans for power are much more definite and much more accessible to assessments of costs and benefits, in a word much more tangible, than plans for flood control and irrigation; however important the latter may be in the future, they are at present, to say the least of it, slightly vague. The important thing is that money should be permitted to talk and to dictate decisions, and so it does: it talks to Tanesco the way it always talks to power enterprises, and in the course of the procedure outlined WDID will also have to convert their wishes into terms of money if they want them to materialize.[43]
As May-Britt Öhman convincingly shows, it was the World Bank’s methods of economic calculation, the “discounted cash flow” method and their underlying assumptions, which finally lead to the appraisal of the Great Ruaha power project.[44]The appraisal also discussed the alternative of using thermal power, with imported diesel as energy source. Öhman argues, that, “if SIDA and the World Bank had not been promoting the Great Ruaha power project with credits at a low rate of interest, the thermal power plant would at this point have been the “best alternative” from a cost aspect.[45]
The appraisal of the Great Ruaha project clearly illustrates that the explanation for the emergence of an electricity infrastructure which is mainly based on hydropower in Tanzania, needs to go beyond structuralist views arguing with the countries large hydropower potential. The debate about multi-purpose vs. single-purpose use of large-dams show a striking similarity to those on cogeneration in the early stage of German electrification. Here as well, a narrow focus on pure electricity generation provided “objective” arguments for the superiority of single-purpose electricity generation. Furthermore, in contrasts to Scotts understanding of large dams as prime examples for the materialization of high-modernist ideology, the cases presented suggest not to overemphasize dams as national projects. A more nuanced and relational perspective is needed here, looking at the complex power-relationship and assymetries. This corresponds to the findings of David Hart , who has effectively shown at the case of the VRP in Ghana, hydropower development in postcolonial Africa relied on a compromise between the interests of African governments, foreign industry, and international funding agencies such as the World Bank.[46]
From colonial science to development science – the authority of scientific knowledge
This chapter will include a discussion of the concepts of “colonial science” and “development science”, the “detached approach” (Hoag), “scientific alibi” (Öhman, Mung’ongo
[1] In North Africa gas was the main fuel, in East and Central Africa wood and in South Africa coal. Diesel engines fuelled with imported oil were widely used in West Africa. Showers, Electrifying Africa, 195.
[2] Showers, Electrifying Africa, 198-200.
[3] For an overview see Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, Writing the History of Development: A Review of the Recent Literature, in: Contemporary European History 20, 02 (2011), 215–232.
[4] Hodge, Joseph Morgan, Triumph of the Expert. Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, Athens 2007.
[5] Hodge, Triumph of the Expert, 18f. On the aspect of depolitization see also: James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine. »Development«, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge 1990; Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts. Egypt, techno-politics, modernity. Berkeley 2002.
[6] Daniel Speich, Der Entwicklungsautomatismus. Ökonomisches Wissen als Heilsversprechen in der ostafrikanischen Dekolonisation, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 48 (2008), 183-212.
[7] Ibid., 183.
[8] Gilson, Norbert, Konzepte von Elektrizitätsversorgung und Elektrizitätswirtschaft: Zur Entstehung eines neuen Fachgebietes der Technikwissenschaften zwischen 1880 und 1945. Stuttgart 1994. „Elektrizitätswirtschaftslehre can be translated as the “course of study dealing with the business economics of electricity-producing plants”.
[9] Ibid. 150.
[10] Beispiele (siehe Binder)
[11] Stier, Staat und Strom, 154.
[12] For an overview on Germany see Bernhard Stier, Die neue Elektrizitätsgeschichte zwischen kulturhistorischer Erweiterung und kommunikationspolitischer Instrumentalisierung. Anmerkungen zum Forschungsstand am Ende des „langen 20. Jahrhunderts der Elektrizität“, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 87,4 (2000), 477–487. Binder, Elektrifizierung als Vision; David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies. Cambridge 1990; Graeme Gooday, Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880 – 1914. London 2008.
[13] David Gugerli, Redeströme: Zur Elektrifizierung der Schweiz 1880-1914. Zürich 1996.
[14] For criticism on Gugerli see Stier, Die neue Elektrizitätsgeschichte, 479-481
[15] James C Scott, Seeing like a State – How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have Failed. New Haven/London 1998.
[16] Ibid. 4-5
[17] Scott, Seeing like a State, 229.
[18] As Scott states, documentation of the villagization process is abundant, thanks to the international interest in the experiment and the relatively open character of Tanzanian political life. Scott, Seeing like a State, 229.
[19] Hubertus, Büschel, Eine Brücke am Mount Meru. Zur Globalgeschichte von Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe und Gewalt in Tanganjika, in: Hubertus Büschel, und Daniel Speich (ed.), Entwicklungswelten: Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Frankfurt am Main 2009, 175–206.
[20] Julius Nyerere, Inauguration speech 1962, quoted in: Andreas Eckert, Herrschen und Verwalten: afrikanische Bürokraten, staatliche Ordnung und Politik in Tanzania, 1920-1970. München 2007, 254.
[21] Scott, Seeing like a State, 231, For an extensive treatment of the electrfication of Russia see Jonathan Coppersmith, The Electrification of Russia, 1880-1926. Ithaca 1992; Kendall Bailes, Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia. Princeton 1978.
[22] Scott, Seeing like a State, 231, 166f.
[23] Scott, Seeing like a State, 215.
[24] “Kidatu Commissioning Soon,” 1975, cited in Heather J. Hoag, Transplanting the TVA? International Contributions to Postwar River Development in Tanzania, in: Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 4, 3 (2006), 247–267, 249.
[25] United Republic of Tanzania, 1969, 121, cited in Hoag, Transplanting the TVA, 249.
[26] For an overview see Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams. London 1996.
[27] Scott, Seeing like a State, 6.
[28] UN EcoSoc Council Office Record 21st Session, 1956, quoted Hoag, Transplanting the TVA, 253.
[29] McCully, Silenced Rivers, 16; Hoag 2006, Transplanting the TVA, 247.
[30] The Nationalist, quoted in Hoag 249
[31] Kate B. Showers, Beyond Mega on a Mega Continent: Grand Inga on Central Africa’s Congo River, in: Stanley D. Brunn (ed.), Engineering Earth: The Impacts of Megaengineering Projects. Dordrecht 2011, 1651–1682.
[32] Hoag and Öhman (2008)
[33] Hoag, Transplanting the TVA, 262.
[34] Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 16.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Walsh, Martin, The not-so-Great Ruaha and hidden histories of an environmental panic in Tanzania, in: Journal of Eastern African Studies 6, 2 (2012), 303–335.
[37] Hoag, Transplanting the TVA.
[38] Frey, Kunkel, Writing the History of Development, 223; Frederick Cooper, Writing the History of Development’, in Corinna R. Unger, Stephan Malinowski, Andreas Eckert (eds.), Modernizing Missions: Approaches to ‘Developing’ the Non-Western World after 1945 special issue, Journal of Modern European History, 8, 1 (2010), 5–23, here 15.
[39] Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 40f.
[40] Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 185-200.
[41] Kjell J. Havnevik, Tanzania: The limits of development from above. Motala/Dar es Salaam 1993, 282; Hoag, Transplanting the TVA, 250.
[42] Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 196.
[43] World Bank consultant John Fletcher, quoted in Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 186.
[44] Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties, 206f
[46] David Hart, The Volta River project: A case study in politics and technology. Edinburgh 1980.
History of Electricity in Tanzania 