Anciaes, PR; (2020) Book Review: Under Construction: Technologies of Development in Urban Ethiopia by Daniel Mains. [Digital scholarly resource]. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/03/1...

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Abstract

Investment in new infrastructure has been one of the main strategies for development in Ethiopia, one of the world’s fastest growing economies. In Under Construction, Daniel Mains argues that the process of building this infrastructure has also changed the relationship between citizens and State, and not always for the better. Construction projects confer legitimacy to the state as a provider of “modernity” – something very true in Ethiopia, an “extreme case of state-led development”. But that sometimes comes at the expense of some groups who are made worse off by the projects. In other words, construction “builds at the same time it destroys”. Most of the book is about transport infrastructure, although there is also a chapter on dams. Good transport connects places, people, and markets, so building or upgrading transport infrastructure has a multiplier effect on economic growth. The problem is that transport projects, instead of connecting, actually disconnect some people, not only from those places, people, and markets, but more broadly from the renewed “modern city” and from the State. The book looks in detail at how these dynamics have played in Jimma and Hawassa, two of the largest cities in Ethiopia.

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