Electricity in Africa: The Politics of Transformation in Uganda.

• Author: Ruth, Christian
• Position: AFRICA - Book review

Gore, Christopher D. Electricity in Africa: The Politics of Transformation in Uganda. Suffolk, UK: James Currey Ltd., 2017.

Christopher Gores lively new book, Electricity in Africa, is an excellent case study of one of the continent's most pressing issues: energy availability and consumption. Based on over a decade and a half of research and interviews, Electricity in Africa, part of the praiseworthy African Issues series, reveals the emerging scholarship of energy studies in East Africa, focusing on Uganda because of its uniquely bleak energy situation. Despite its increasing population, Uganda has suffered from one of the lowest levels of electricity access in Africa, and Gore provides a thorough examination of how and why this has occurred.

Gore uses Uganda's struggle for energy independence and prosperity as a way to tackle the postcolonial politics of energy infrastructure, development, and domestic governance. His focus on the politics of energy is important, and he demonstrates how sociopolitical factors are a key part of the processes that drive transformative energy goals. Gore, an associate professor of political science at Ryerson University, has successfully interwoven these two fields of study into Electricity in Africa. He explicitly focuses on the "political challenges of providing a public service" over the past two and a half decades, arguing that electricity provides a unique way of looking at this juncture (6).

Gore claims that Electricity in Africa makes two major contributions to the scholarship of energy production in Sub-Saharan Africa: he shows how the World Bank became deeply involved with energy development projects in Uganda in the 1990s to a previously unknown degree, influencing domestic politics as a result, and that the processes of developing the energy infrastructure have had profound effects on the sociopolitical and economic fabric of Uganda, creating multiple transformations. Ultimately, Gore asserts that politics and energy goals interact in a variety of reciprocal ways, and he provides a wealth of support for these claims.

Electricity in Africa is organized into five chapters. The first two give historical background for energy development schemes in Africa, focusing on hydroelectric dams and the general trends of electricity availability in the region. Gore explains how difficulties in implementing projects led to the Ugandan government turning toward nontraditional investors like...