Stephan F. Miescher. A dam for Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022. 598 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50. Paper. ISBN: 9780253059956.
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: Part of review forum on "A dam for Africa"A Dam for Africa is a beautifully written tour de force account of the Akosombo Dam's construction, the politics and debates enveloping it, and its meaning in the Ghanaian national psyche.It is a global history built from an intense scrutinization of the local while illuminating how global forces and figures shaped what was possible within the local.A Dam for Africa demonstrates how to situate Ghana within local and global historical paradigms.Local African actors and ideas are never sidelined from the "bigger" story.In fact, they represent the "bigger," global history.This is reflected in the book's methodology and sources.Miescher conducts oral histories to account for those displaced by the Akosombo Dam, those who lived in the Akosombo Township, and Volta Aluminum Company's (VALCO's) staff and management."Oral histories," Miescher argues, "can correct the silences of the resettlement archive that tends to privilege the interactions of senior male community leaders with government officials" (240).These testimonies buttress one of Miescher's central contentions, that the resettlement process was anything but a smooth affair, as the written records proclaim.However, the written archive is not absent.Reflecting the mobilities of his actors, Miescher's archival sites are transnationally situated in Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States.While certain chapters emphasize particular collections, the main sources, and not exhaustive, are the private collections of Edgar Kaiser, the president of Kaiser Industries and chairman of Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation, the company's materials, the Electricity Company of Ghana's (ECG's) archive, and Ghanaian newspapers.In many Cold War histories, the African technocrat, expert, is an elusive figure lost behind African leaders or foreign experts.In examining the underutilized ECG archive, Miescher breathes life into the 'illusive' figure of the African technocrat.This is one of the book's signature interventions.Moreover, A Dam for Africa unpacks the dialectical engagement between the African technocrat and non-technocrat through community petitions seeking "rural electrification" (280).Miescher's approach, capturing the voices of the elite, the marginalized, and the bureaucratic class, should be seen as a methodological and archival template for historians of the postcolony.What propels the book forward is the transformation of Nkrumah's modernization dreams, expressed and embodied through the Akosombo Dam's construction, into a national nightmare.In Miescher's rendering, the Dam turns Ghana
Source: African Studies Review
DOI: 10.1017/asr.2024.141
Author: Nana Osei-Opare
Institution: Rice University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4407712975