Anticipatory infrastructural practices: The coming of electricity in rural

Kenya

Abstract

This paper explores how the extension of the national electricity grid in a village in

rural Kenya affects households’ energy using practices. Based on ethnographic

research, this paper examines how people act while anticipating electricity as well as

what energy practices emerge as part of life with a partial presence of electricity

infrastructure.

Drawing on anthropological infrastructure studies and STS, the paper suggests

members of a community participate in the formation of an electricity infrastructure

through their preparatory practices. The making of electricity infrastructures through

anticipatory actions has not yet been subject to research, but as the article argues, it is

precisely by acquiring competences like stacking of resources or adjusting to

breakdowns and volatile electricity prices that energy infrastructures are composed.

The paper further argues that certain objects of anticipation allow for making

preparations in relation to uncertain electric and political futures. 

By leveraging the notion of anticipatory infrastructural practices the main

contribution of this article is to enrich the understanding of participatory politics to

also encompass mundane actions related to energy distribution and use. This is

relevant in anticipation of a future where a dramatically higher number of people will

become grid connected.

1. Introduction

Striving towards achieving universal access to modern energy services dominates

international as well as national political agendas, as combating energy poverty is

seen as a main entry point to realise UN’s Sustainable Development Goals [1].

Providing electricity is an essential part of the Development Goals, as around 1 billion

people, most of them living in rural communities, are not connected to an electricity

grid, and another 1 billion people have access to only poorly functioning and

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unreliable electricity networks [2]. Though there is a huge demand for electricity by

citizens in the global South and intense focus by the international community in

providing it, few social scientific contributions address the implications of universal

electrification processes [3]. Problematizing the notion of ‘universal access’ this

article offers an analysis of the coming of electricity in rural Kenya. Through an

ethnographic account of a varied set of responses to a partial presence of electricity

infrastructure the article reveals a need to develop policy which is attentive to the

challenges and ambiguities that exist around electricity provision and use.

Countering the energy challenge, increasingly many electrification projects in

Sub Saharan Africa have seen the light of day. In Kenya, the national electricity grid

is expanding remarkably. The government-led national electrification programmes,

which are carried out by Kenya Power1 who owns and operates the electricity

transmission and electricity system in Kenya, had connected 63% (5.9 million) of the

Kenyan people in 2017, which is a substantial increase from 1 million people in 2010

[4]. With the Rural Electrification Programme2 a part of the government’s plans is to

connect isolated, rural households. In 2014 only 12.6% of the rural population had

grid access [6] making it the biggest group without connection [5]. The programme

encompasses mainly initiatives to expand the national electricity grid, but also smaller

decentralised grids run by diesel generators have been implemented as part of

bringing electricity to remote communities [7,8].

Alongside government initiatives to accelerate rural electrification, NGOs and

research institutions have for years worked to increase energy access in rural areas by

implementing alternatives to centralised energy distribution. Among these

alternatives, solar energy appears as one of the most prominent. Energy kiosks, mini

grids and solar home systems have been developed, tested and installed to electrify

areas beyond grid reach [7,9], and especially solar PV lanterns, as a smaller and more

affordable solar product, have become a significant part of providing light in rural

Kenya [7].

1 The Kenyan Government has a controlling stake with 50.1% of the shares of Kenya Power, and 49.9% is owned by private shareholders2 See also The Rural Electrification Authority http://www.rea.co.ke

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In short, electricity - coming from either the grid or solar - is spreading and

access to electricity does no longer solely manifest itself as vague promises of a

distant future. These developments in the Kenyan energy sector set the stage for this

article’s exploration of the anticipatory practices that are wired up with the coming

electricity in rural Kenya. While different sources of electricity are becoming

available we focus specifically on the expansion of the electricity grid and how it

unfolds on ground. We take our point of departure in the village of Rafiki and focus

on the practices that emerge as electricity becomes increasingly visible in the

landscape. We meet villagers who hope for a future with electricity access and live in

strong anticipation of the coming of electricity; planning, preparing and plotting their

way towards a grid connection. We explore community responses to electricity’s

coming and once the connection is obtained; the anxieties and daily work-arounds and

practices of composing an energy infrastructure with concern for both finances and

traditions while dealing with an imperfect, yet ever expanding, infrastructure. As this

article will illustrate, getting electricity access is not a straightforward process and

neither is it straightforward to stay connected. Becoming and being an electricity

consumer in Rafiki entails active engagement and extensive knowledge of resources

to make an energy supply stable enough for everyday use.

During the previous two decades energy scholars have been preoccupied

opening the black box of invisible energy infrastructures which reside in the

background of everyday life. These studies are contextualized in energy

infrastructures in industrialized countries, where electricity supply is stable, reliable

and affordable (to many). The consequences of yearlong dependency on grid

electricity have been studied thoroughly but only few contributions address the

ongoing global extension of electricity [10], which will have unknown but widespread

effects. Thus, there is a need to anthropologically address the implications of the

discourse and practice of electrification [10]. Akhil Gupta, for instance, argues that

social scientists especially need to focus on electricity in the global South, as there is a

lack of accounts of what these consumers are doing with energy, and why they switch

back and forth between various energy sources [3].

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By mobilizing anthropological infrastructure studies and STS, we leverage the

notion of anticipatory infrastructural practices to argue how material objects impact

on imaginaries about the future. As we show, electricity figures prominently in

people’s mind both due to its almost-presence, its absence and the promissory future it

enacts. To understand better the coming of electricity to new places we examine

household electricity consumption in rural Kenya to provide insights on how people

act in the anticipatory phase of getting electricity and what kinds of practices develop

when electricity actually arrives. We will first show how anticipation is expressed in

everyday material practices where attention to physical objects in the landscape

allows for making sense of uncertain electricity futures. Arguing that the very

materiality of the electricity infrastructure mediates government operations in the area

we suggest that staying attentive to electricity poles as they are being erected is also

staying attentive to political forces of energy distribution.

We will then show what anticipatory practices emerge as part of life with and against

a partial electricity infrastructure that follows in the wake of a grid connection. The

continuous stream of blackouts reminds the villager of the necessity to stay attentive

to what the various causes of instability might be. Describing how villagers stack

multiple energy sources as a way to manage the unreliable supply and volatile

electricity prices, we show that this material engagement of composing various energy

sources is also political engagement. When the energy consumer composes resources

to disentangle herself from relying completely on the unreliable grid and the

governmental actors that run it, she engages herself in the minutiae details of energy

production and consumption. This points to how centralised and decentralised energy

systems are closely related in anticipatory practices. Such anticipation happens as a

way of handling uncertain economic futures, but anticipation also plays an important

role in the formation of actual energy infrastructures.

Referring to the global energy challenges mentioned in this introduction in the

discussion and conclusion section we discuss what implications our findings hold for

rethinking different energy futures.

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2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Understanding socio-technical change

Inspired by anthropological infrastructure studies3 and STS, the underlying approach

of this article draws on concepts of socio-technical change. Central to socio-technical

studies is the relationship between different parts of an infrastructure, and especially

the heterogeneous networks of human and non-human actors that shape, change and

stabilize the links between the actors [11]. Within this frame of reference scholars

have studied the intrinsic social nature of physical objects introducing notions of

scripts and fluidity to capture how artefacts, through their materiality, contribute to

social change [11–13]. Technologies do not possess inherent transformative powers,

nor are they taken into use independently of the social context of which they are part.

Instead, implementation and use is a constant negotiation between technology and

societal developments. Our analysis of anticipatory infrastructural practices should be

understood within this socio-technical line of thought.

2.2 Studies of electricity infrastructures in developing countries

Studies of electricity in developing countries testify to the contested and disputed, yet

desired attributes of rural electrification [3,11,14–16].

Sociotechnical studies address how unintended consequences of electrification

such as illegal connections, electricity theft and public demonstration tend to follow

the arrival of electricity [11,14,15]. A central point in these studies is that technical

devices, such as electricity meters, act as mediators between state-controlled

electricity operators and the consumer. An electricity meter can form state-citizen

contracts that can be contested in the actual technology use, and thus it carries with it

a potential to shape and spin off new relationships between the energy operator and

the user. Forefronting the meter in her study, von Schnitzler [15] examines how

prepaid electricity and water meters become re-scripted in the wake of apartheid when

residents in a poor area in South Africa negotiate moral and political questions as they

3 Originating in American information studies [39,40], infrastructure studies is a growing interdisciplinary field of research. See for example the recently published Handbook of Infrastructures and Social Complexity [41] raising infrastructural practices as a concern in anthropology, sociology and science and technology studies.

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bypass the meters to get free electricity and water. Studied as an object of social and

political negotiations, we see how the material engagement with the meter becomes a

political engagement, as what often is considered to be a neutral device can take

center stage in much larger historical and political debates about citizenship [11,15].

Similarly, Tanja Winther’s [14] study of electricity theft in Zanzibar draws

attention to the distribution of rights and resources in regards to electricity use.

Winther observes how husbands of several wives make unauthorised electricity

connections in order to locally distribute electricity equally to the wives. In Winther’s

study husbands need to make up for the inequality of the energy distribution system in

place. This system allows only one outlet per customer and is therefore not fitted to

serve the social convention that wives must be treated equally. In this work, we see a

glimpse of how energy engagement can present itself though in an unconventional

and unexpected way, as husbands (illegally) become part of the electricity

infrastructures to provide for families. Theft is a matter of what is culturally accepted

but moreover, compliance with rules is a question of the relationship to the supplier,

which is mediated by the objects representing the state enterprise such as the meters

and the electricity connections.

Countering a widespread understanding that households in developing

countries switch from unhealthy, traditional energy sources, as modern and more

healthy technologies become available, studies of everyday energy consumption in

developing countries show that rural households stack energy taking a great variety of

both traditional (firewood, charcoal and kerosene) and modern energy sources

(electricity and renewable energy) into use [17]. Such studies point out that energy

consumption in developing countries is not only the result of the rational actions of

individuals who desire a transition from one mode of energy consumption to another.

Rather, a wide range of factors such as material, social and cultural contexts influence

and shape household energy consumption and the appropriation of energy appliances

[17]. From the point of view of anthropological infrastructure studies, energy is

interesting as a material force in and by itself, as well as that which makes human life

possible in different ways in different socio-cultural contexts [18,19]. Exploring the

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relations between energy, gender and decision making in Kenya, Fingleton [16] shows

how women are considered as the main energy users and beneficiaries of modern

energy, as men spend most time outside the household. However, men make the

major purchasing decisions for the household, but as they do not see a benefit from

spending money on new kitchen technology that would reduce the time spent on

cooking, men would rather buy a TV for their entertainment when they come home

after dark. Thus, the modern technologies that households adopt depend on who

makes the purchasing decisions and the expected benefits [16,20]. Temporalities of

social change might also affect how and what energy is used for. From this study on

electricity of middle class homes in south India, Wilhite [21] shows how technologies

might change status over time as a result of changes in the social constitution of the

household. When middle class joint households were replaced by nuclear households,

and possibilities for women to attend studies and go to work outside the home

increased, household chores were delegated to early mornings and late evenings. This

created a need to store cooked food, which had previously been seen as unhealthy and

inappropriate. By changing the sense of normality, the time-saving script of the

refrigerator was activated.

Considerable amounts of studies address the social and cultural impacts of

electricity after its (even if only partial) arrival [3,9,13,22,23]. These studies

illuminate how the arrival of electricity in rural areas have contributed to the

transformation of the material, social and religious contexts of which it becomes part;

for example by challenging religious virtues of material modesty as electrical artefacts

becomes objects of desire [13], blurring rural-urban dichotomies as rural populations

counteract feelings of remoteness by taking into use TVs, fridges and ironing boxes

associated with urban lifestyles [23] and changing otherwise lively social

communities as people retreat to their homes to watch TV [3].

While these accounts provide rich insights into the transformative effects of

electricity as it enables new forms of sociality and re-negotiation of socio-material

realities, they do not specifically address the coming of electricity. By shedding light

(no pun intended) on the waiting, observing and preparing that precede rural

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electrification as well as the continuous planning from uncertainty and instability that

follow as households obtain an electricity connection, we show how households relate

to electricity. We analyse this relation by describing and analysing specific social and

material constitutions as forms of anticipatory engagement. We find that in the

absence of electricity, in the atmosphere of expecting electricity blackouts, and in the

practical, daily work-arounds of an incomplete and unstable infrastructure,

anticipation is a point of orientation for our interlocutors and inform their future

actions. As conceptual contribution, we offer ‘object of anticipation’ as a way of

capturing the socio-material aspects of electricity that pertain to energy engagement as

infrastructural practice.

3. Methods and data

The case is based on an ethnographic field study conducted by second author in rural

Kenya. Data collection was carried out during four months in the context of a research

collaboration with Strathmore Energy Research Centre in Nairobi in September and

October 2013. It was second author’s task to study the social impact of small solar

lanterns in off grid areas in Kenya4. However, when second author conducted

fieldwork in a small village in rural Kenya, she gradually replaced the initial focus on

solar lanterns by a focus on how vividly electricity figured in the everyday lives of the

people – especially in the context of the very sparse electricity access.

In the village, some households had access to electricity and some did not. The

people, who did not have access said they were “waiting for electricity to arrive”, but

as we shall see ‘waiting’ was a rather active and engaged undertaking. For example,

‘waiting’ involved constant speculation about what possible political and social

changes would increase their chances of getting electricity. Moreover, the people who

had access to the grid experienced that electricity would come and go, and thus used

other energy sources in order to make functional arrangements that made up for the

imperfect supply.

4 The project was supervised by first and third author. Writing up the ethnographic account was a collaborative effort.

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Part of the empirical data was conducted during a stay in the village of Rafiki

in the Nakuru County, Midwest Kenya, where second author lived with two different

families over a period of three weeks. She observed and participated in village life and

experienced the rhythms and routines of everyday life. Moreover, she conducted 16

interviews with 12 villagers, who she met during her participation in village life. The

general approach was to ‘observe everything’ [24] and stay as true as possible to the

setting [25,26] in order to understand the role of energy sources in the particular

location.

Another main source of empirical material came from walking around with

inhabitants of Rafiki, as much village life happened on foot. As a method, walking is a

form of embodied participation, a full bodily experience that can help with

establishing trust between informants and ethnographer, as walking is less confronting

than face-to-face interaction [27]. Moreover, the mobility, which walking enabled,

was beneficial for exploring energy as something that is physically sited [28,29] in

multiple locations inside and outside the private homes. Walking around the village,

passing pole by pole, spurred conversations about the expanding electricity grid.

The empirical data was analysed with the approach ‘situational analysis’,

which is specifically developed to make sense of social and technological

complexities [30]. One of the assets of the situational analysis approach is the

mapping of relations. Through mapping exercises, it seeks to pay attention to as many

elements as possible in the situation of enquiry, not just the ‘loudest’ or most visible

actors. Visualization techniques are used to place actors that are quite heterogeneous,

such as rapports, discourses (narrative, visual, historical), individuals, and a variety of

non-human or material actors, side by side. This means that in order to investigate

who and what is present in situations, which are by definition dynamic and emerging,

the analyst must make memos of the most surprising and/or significant relations. In

this manner, the analysis is both a way of stabilizing a situation for the purposes of

analysis, as it is a way of staying true to the dynamics inherent in social life.

Framing electricity poles as objects of anticipation we now turn to the analysis

section, in which we show how material engagement emerge as political engagement

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when villagers in Rafiki stay attentive to electricity poles to make sense of uncertain

electric and political futures.

4. Analysis

4.1. Electricity poles and their politics

At first hand, Rafiki resembled any other village second author had visited during her

stay in Nakuru County. Yet, from walking around in the village, something made

Rafiki stand out. Signs of electricity were everywhere. Electricity wiring, poles and

cables were impossible to overlook in and around Rafiki, even though it was

commonly known as an ‘off-grid area’. The immediate surroundings of Rafiki boasted

with transformers and electricity poles shooting up from the ground. In the village

centre, stores with electronic equipment sat next to vegetable stables and satellite

dishes popped up from every second rooftop. Curious to grasp why electricity was so

seemingly present in Rafiki, she engaged in numerous conversations with the local

villagers. A shared understanding that Rafiki benefitted from its close proximity to

Kabarak University, just 2-3 kilometres down the road, emerged from these

conversations. Kabarak University was a government interest and therefore had

electricity. In other words, Rafiki was in an advantageous position as the government

had decided to bring electricity near the village. This was in stark contrast to the

neighbouring village of Kambi Ya Moto, located only 5-6 kilometres from Kabarak

University. Kambi Ya Moto was too far away from Kabarak University to benefit

from the development of an electricity infrastructure.

Despite this only few people were connected to the grid in Rafiki. Many

villagers, regardless of them being connected or off the grid, were highly

knowledgeable about the electricity in the area. During interviews, they provided

detailed stories about how electricity is distributed from the main station in Nakuru

Town to Rafiki through substations, pipelines and transformers.

Annitah and Jacob and their three kids had waited for electricity for seven

years. While waiting they kept strict account of the distance between their house and

the nearest electricity pole. When, in 2006, Rafiki started getting electricity the poles

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were one km away from Jacob and Annitah’s house. With this distance, they could

not afford the installation. Annitah explained how the price for the installation would

reflect the distance between the location of the house and the transformer:

“I could not, because it was more than 600 meters away, so I needed to wait,

so that I could afford electricity. There was a time where I applied for it and it

was still up there [near the main road]. There was a time when I applied for

electricity and it was still very far. I had to pay 1 million because it was still

very far from the transformer. It came closer so that we could afford it.”

(Interview, October 2013)

Once an electricity pole was within a range of 600 meters or less from her house, the

instalment price per household would drop from 1.5 million Kenyan shillings (KES)

to 35,000 KES (Field Notes, October 2013)5. 1.5 million KES is too expensive for

many households, which means that several households in Rafiki had no choice but to

wait until electricity poles were erected closer to their homes. This relationship

between locality and costs expressed itself as ‘common knowledge’; something

everyone knew about. In addition, this relationship gave the electricity poles certain

power over the ways in which villagers anticipated and prepared for electricity in their

daily lives.

When Annitah routinely measured the distance from the poles to her house,

the pole ‘informed’ her about the prospect of getting electricity: A pole which is 600

meters away paves the way for the opportunity to apply for a transformer, while a

pole which is 800 meters away does not. Getting electricity requires keeping an eye

on the visible signs of movements of electricity in the landscape. Once the specific

distance is reached, the poles signal that electricity is now affordable, and this is seen

as a sign to take action in the household. In this way, the physical sign of electricity in

the landscape prompts Annitah’s anticipation and orients her towards a prospective

future with access to electricity.

The specific form that anticipation took was that Annitah and Jacob would

5 1 KES equals 0,0080 euro. Source: www.xe.com (exchange rate accessed on 13.02.2018)

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speak to the many others who had also prepared for electricity years in advance. They

would speak about how to make the installation; They would inform themselves about

issues such as electricity supply and demand and the legislation that affected them.

They would get involved in questions around electricity supply, demand and

legislation and they would form groups to apply together. In the households, some

walls would be covered with chalk drawings marking where future electricity sockets

would be installed, while others had sockets and wiring for grid power installed

already when the house was built. Thus, preparations were made even though

electricity was unavailable for an unknown period of time.

Figure 1: Chalk drawing of electricity sockets [photo by second author]

Getting access to electricity in Rafiki involves work, including the work of creating an

imaginary about the household in this future reality. It does not happen automatically,

easily or quickly, but is quite an engaged undertaking of measuring, planning and

adapting to a changing environment. In this way, we see how electricity engagement

is not just a matter of what you think and do when plugged in or while reaping the 12

benefits of grid-access. In part, being engaged in the many and varied aspects of

electricity relates to the practical and mental work one puts into getting access to

electricity.

Indeed, the signs of electricity in the landscape, whether near or far, generated

anticipation of a future with electricity. However, the poles also brought uncertainty

with them. During conversations Annitah would often air her frustrations that

government plans were hard to trust. She worried about how to define a space of

action for herself and her family when the advancement of the poles was

unpredictable. Nevertheless, the movement of the poles was the more reliable of the

available information sources. Thus, through their material presence and steady

movement across the landscape the poles would elicit anticipatory practices, i.e. the

preparations for electricity sockets. As part of an emerging infrastructure the poles

mediate the relationship between citizens and political projects such as that of

bringing electricity to certain places in the countryside and not to others.

Infrastructures are in this case ‘political’ because they ‘spin out new relations’ [31],

and in doing so, they articulate the social in unintended ways by fostering particular

groups who are defined by differences in access or by making a (temporary) political

community through desire for a particular infrastructural project [32]. By observing

and trying to make sense of the activity in the material landscape, the poles participate

in Rafiki’s material politics as objects of anticipation and engage the potential future

consumers in anticipatory infrastructural practices. In this context of electricity grid

expansion in Rafiki anticipation hence manifests itself as a particular material practice

where certain governmental actors become visible through the readings of the

changing energy landscape.

4.2 Grid-connected and still without electricity

While off-grid households prepare for electricity to arrive, in this study, those who

have grid access would also engage in anticipatory practices. Their involvement takes

a different shape, but as we will show, making sense of the material environment and

responding to it with practical strategies happens here, too. For these villagers,

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expecting electricity not to work is a common part of everyday life, as power might be

cut at every given time of the day, for an unknown period of time, and without

warning. This ongoing stream of blackouts shapes the material reality, which people

relate and respond to. Guesses as to what causes these blackouts are numerous. As

was pointed out during a conversation, the power infrastructure is in poor condition

and thus in need of continuous repair, and every time the Kenya Power Company

(KPC) has to repair the grid, they disconnect the power prompting a blackout.

Another interviewee/informant said that the infrastructure is simply too weak and the

capacity too low, and therefore it crashes every evening due to extensive overload.

Isaac, a DJ at the local lodge, depends on a stable electricity supply to practice

his passion and profession, which is to play music. Isaac kept himself informed about

the workings of the electricity grid, and he explained why the power was regularly

cut:

“When you see there is a blackout, definitely there has to be a problem with

the poles, that’s the reason why, a pole has fallen down, it has been sucked.

When it rains, definitely, there has to be a blackout because of the pole thing.”

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Figure 3: Poles collapsing. Photo by second author

Once again we see the electricity pole as a material sign that mediates the

relationship between a citizen, here Isaac, and the energy company, the KPC. As he

explained, the company does not bother to dig deep enough into the ground, for which

reason the poles are easily knocked over. Power cuts happen when the soil gets soft

from the rain, and the poles fall down causing the wiring and cables to become

hopelessly entangled.

But power cuts are also caused by theft, Isaac elaborates. Recently, someone

had tried to steal oil from a transformer causing a blackout that lasted for two days:

“There is this oil that they put, I heard that one litre is 5000 shillings so they

steal it, day in and day out. They steal the oil. They steal a lot of these things.

Like another day we stayed two days without electricity.”

Isaac continued with narrating how the employees of the KPC would often

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disconnect the power in order to get overtime payment; a different kind of electricity

theft:

“(…) Even the Kenya Power people themselves. The very people they know

how to disconnect lines, you know they are paid overtime so they will do

anything to get that overtime, they disconnect to go and connect them again

and they can spend five hours and they get good money for that overtime (…).

I don’t know how they do it, they come here, and they roam around. So you

tend to wonder what is this (…). It is actually human creation most of these

blackouts?”

As Isaac emphasizes, blackouts are mostly human creations. The poor digging,

the incomplete construction of infrastructures and theft of oil point to how humans

build, implement, manage and take care of materiality, and especially what happens in

the unsuccessful performances or absences of these events. This is the case, when the

members of the energy company are not attentive to or do not improve the incomplete

capacity of the infrastructures that they designed, constructed and implemented,

causing the network to crash. Or in a more direct sense, as the example of the

employees from KPC who cut power for overtime payment. Material reality, a failing

electricity infrastructure, is social in the way that the disconnection of power can be

caused by workers who disconnect power to get paid more. When the villager

experiences blackouts, electricity poles, in this sense, have an explanatory power. Just

as the poles represented the likelihood of getting closer to electricity access, for Isaac

the poles also mediate his relation to certain (political) realities beyond his reach. This

illustrates how attention to material infrastructure in the landscape is also attention to

political forces in relation to energy distribution. It testifies to how governmental

actors and energy companies become present through the technologies they

implement as well as through their failures to do so in a transparent way. The

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unpredictability of the future of electricity is materially visual but reminds villagers of

the political nature.

In the third and last part of the analysis, we see how anticipated blackouts and

volatile electricity prices shape everyday energy practices as we dive further into the

infrastructural practices around energy consumption, to better understand what

anticipatory infrastructural practices amount to.

4.3 Composing an energy infrastructure

While the coming of electricity elicits strong anticipation and uncertainty, being

connected to the grid enacts other uncertain futures as we have just shown. In Rafiki,

life with electricity can best be described as life based on anticipated instability. In the

following section we describe how uncertainties such as interruptions caused by

electricity blackouts and volatile prices on electricity become incorporated into

everyday practices. This is relevant in order to better understand how anticipating

electricity as well as infrastructure instability and power fluctuations influence the

daily energy consumption. Villagers compose energy infrastructures of multiple

energy sources to make the unpredictable conditions more manageable.

Living off-grid or on-grid with an unstable supply means that people in and

around Rafiki use a variety of energy sources. In households with electricity, villagers

concurrently use solar lanterns as well as ‘traditional’ energy sources like kerosene,

charcoal and firewood. In Rafiki, a dinner would be prepared over open fire while the

electricity driven TV was running in the background. At the same time solar energy

would charge the mobile phones, while the children were studying in the shade of a

kerosene lamp. In brief, the villagers’ consumption is composed as they mix different

energy sources in order to carry out everyday activities such as studying, cooking, and

cleaning. Typically referred to as ‘stacking’ or ‘multiple fuel choice’, rural households

in developing countries commonly use different energy sources in their housekeeping

[17].

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The pauses in-between functional power supply mean that the electricity

infrastructure forms an everyday of interruption, where Victor, a Rafiki dweller, due

to his experiences with continuous blackouts mixes and stacks energy:

“Now you see we have to use lanterns, there are so many blackouts, every

now and then when you are expecting to be doing something, studying,

writing, watching TV and all of a sudden, then you have to go for kerosene or

if you have that solar, that small one… or use gas.”(Interview, October 2013)

These energy sources were typically referred to as “backup power” or “emergency

power”, which Victor and other informants considered an absolute necessity. Backup

power comes in all shapes and sizes: Solar lanterns, LGP torches, gas stoves, jikos,

generators, candle lights, kerosene lamps, or bonfires. Thus, to make up for an

electricity infrastructure that is considered unreliable, villagers stack and mix energy

sources to create a sufficient supply. Moreover, Victor’s ability to skilfully know how

and when to use different backup powers appears to be learned social know-how

accumulated through everyday experiences, rather than as a mechanic response to a

failing infrastructure. Thus through observations of when and how blackouts tend to

emerge, Victor make deductions that he applies to make practical, material energy

arrangements.

Stacking of energy sources is also practiced in the kitchen, where different

sorts of kale and ugali would be cooked using a combination of jikos, gas stoves, and

bonfires. Observing the large number of devices and energy sources involved in

cooking a meal overwhelmed second author during her fieldwork. However, it also

appeared that electricity is not included in the cooking. The lack of electricity use in

the kitchen recurred in different households, and the answer for this was always the

same: Cooking with electricity was simply too expensive. As Victor phrased it, it

would “chew you up”:

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“(…) If you try to do that here, oh no, even a kettle for boiling water, we don’t

use it on a regular basis, it will chew you up, it is so expensive (…). You

people use electricity for cooking, here you cannot do that. We instead use

gas. Gas is still expensive, we have electricity, yes, but we prefer to use gas

unless you are in a hurry and you have to use both, but at the same time

though we have all these provisions, we still use charcoal. Some people even

use firewood. Right now if I send you to this hotel around here, a tea place, if

you go there, you’ll find them using firewood.”

(Interview, October 2013)

From Victor’s statement it appears that due to high electricity prices, cooking

with electrical devices is considered too expensive. Grid electricity mainly provides

power to singular services such as to watch TV, but it is too expensive to be

consumed unrestrainedly. Similarly, Annitah explained that when she got electricity

she would still have to “moderate” her use due to the costs and due to sudden,

galloping taxes. Galloping taxes contributed to the perception of electricity as

something highly unpredictable, as electricity could rapidly go from being within

financial reach to being much too expensive. As Annitah explained, she would keep

her solar home system after getting grid connected, because it is cheaper and

foreseeable: “After buying wiring, it only uses the sun. It’s free. I don’t pay bills”.

With the anticipation of sudden tax increases on grid electricity, solar energy

becomes an alternative that renders the consumer flexible in relation to the electricity

infrastructure. The yearning for grid electricity is ambiguous [23], as getting grid

connected also connects the consumer with governmental actors who are associated

with distrust. Solar energy emerges as an enabler for Annitah to detach herself from

political unpredictability. Thus, the use of multiple resources in different contexts

appears as a material engagement that is also political. When the energy consumer

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stacks and regulate her energy sources she also regulates her relation to governmental

actors. This moreover points to how centralised and decentralised energy systems are

closely related in these anticipatory practices as a way of handling uncertain economic

futures that appear in the wake of a grid connection. Moreover, anticipation plays a

role in the local formation of energy infrastructures.

Thus, households’ choices of appliances (electricity, gas stoves, jikos, and

bonfires) are closely connected to and intertwined with the institutional and

infrastructural context. We have seen how the Rafiki energy consumer, through her

anticipatory practices, becomes part of the electricity infrastructure. When she stays

attentive to material objects that surround her and moderates her actions accordingly,

she places herself in the middle of the infrastructural arrangements, thereby engaging

herself in the minutiae details of energy production and consumption. The notion of

anticipation is related not only to getting electricity access but also informs matters

related to consumption and imaginaries about future politics.

5. Discussion and conclusion

We have presented an analysis of anticipatory infrastructural practices exercised by

people living in and around Rafiki, Kenya, by offering an ethnographic account of the

messiness of the electricity transitioning process as it unfolds on-ground.

We specified the notion of an infrastructure in which certain objects of

anticipation allowed for seeing ways of making sense of uncertain electricity futures.

We argued that the very materiality of the electricity infrastructure mediated

government operations in the area. From our analysis it appears that getting electricity

is a process of waiting, anticipating and early preparations of its arrival, and

moreover, how the coming of electricity fosters new kinds of longing, new anxieties

and new practices. In Rafiki, being or becoming an electricity consumer entails the art

of noticing what might be the reality of electricity access or legislation tomorrow or

next year. Being a consumer also entailed competences in regards to calculating what

the progression means in economic terms, as well as making skilful use of mixed

20

energy sources to make energy work on an everyday basis. Our interlocutors would

aspire, plan and learn about the material politics of energy infrastructure as they dealt

with the promises and frustrations of a far from perfect situation. Their anticipatory

practices enrolled them into the infrastructure through specific actions (drawing future

electricity sockets on the wall) and through the competences they acquired (stacking

and being prepared to adjust the sources according to availability).

This on-ground account shows a context where a mix of the national

electricity grid, solar lanterns and ‘traditional’ energy resources co-exist alongside

each other, as rural villagers operate and stack multiple resources. In this manner,

centralised and decentralised, national and private energy systems, are not mutually

exclusive but co-exist in a material energy practice bundled together by the users.

Interestingly, we see how this engagement in electricity spins out new relations to

‘old’ energy resources, when villagers mix and stack resources to make up for an

imperfect electricity infrastructure. People in Rafiki with grid access use electricity

only for very specific purposes. They have certain practices dedicated for electricity

use and others for kerosene, firewood and so on. This points to how a grid connection

in rural Kenya does not take over or substitute other uses of energy resources. Grid

electricity instead reorganises and changes the composition of the various energy

sources already in use. It also points to how the implementation of electricity grid in

rural communities does not happen in vacuum or as linear process on the way to

becoming more modern. Rather, electricity roll out is a messy affair.

So what does the electrification of Rafiki look like? We see how small scale

off grid technologies and large scale grid projects help to electrify Rafiki, as no single

solution has emerged. Together different technologies that vary in scale and

ownership work together to compose a far from perfect infrastructure. Though

electricity elicits hope for certain connected futures, a grid connection at the same

time means anticipation of interrupted supply and anxieties about volatile costs.

Imaginations of the unpredictability of the electrification process remind villagers of

and maybe even increase the distrust towards the government, whose actions are seen

as unpredictable. Solar energy thus comes to carry with it different desires to avoid

21

being too entangled in government affairs, which illustrate the paradox of hungering a

grid connection, while not being too attached to what a grid connection brings with it.

The practical work arounds include how to obtain a connection, yet maintaining

detachment all at once. In this regard, we see how energy sources come to be valued

for other attributes than their symbolic value as either modern or traditional, strong or

weak. With the arrival of electricity, solar energy might further establish itself as a

valuable energy source because it empowers some level of disentanglement from

untrustworthy governmental actors.

Infrastructures are sometimes seen as having a potential to ‘fix’ social issues –

both in shaping social life and to cure certain ills [32]. Also in local, national and

international agendas about universal access to modern energy we see intense

speculation and anticipation. These agendas tend to articulate a story of electricity’s

ability to fundamentally change lives for the better. One of these narratives deals with

imaginaries about being on or off the grid. Arguing that with state owned grid systems

electricity consumers are rendered passive and dependent receivers of a service,

popular forecasts suggest that with more funding to decentralised energy provision,

the monopoly power of national utilities is finally being challenged. Hence,

distributed energy systems are expected to bring ‘innovation’, ‘new ways of thinking’

and ‘empowerment to the people’ by turning consumers into active users who can

‘control their own destinies’ [33]. As we have seen in Rafiki, solar energy does

counteract dependency on the electricity grid and the political unpredictability it

entails. However, being unable to fully power the most desired objects that grid

electricity enables, solar energy, and the appreciation it enjoys, has to be seen in

relation to the arrival of grid electricity. Narratives of large infrastructural grid

projects and ‘small is beautiful’-philosophy do not only co-exist. They bring each

other into existence.

As stated in the introduction, universal access to electricity future energy

demands require rethinking and re-envisioning future energy production and

consumption. This includes the notion that a universal solution to contemporary

energy challenges exists. Following S. Jasanoff’s notion of technologies of humility

22

[34], our study suggests that ethnographic studies of situations where there both is and

isn’t access to electricity are valuable for understanding and learning from the

ambiguities surrounding energy infrastructures today.

States and energy companies in the global North now revamp taken for

granted infrastructures to change production from fossil fuels to solar and wind

energy. However, cables and wiring are buried in the ground rendering the electricity

infrastructure increasingly invisible. Such aesthetic choices places electricity

infrastructures out of sight. Consumers are seen as passive receivers of energy, and

the invisibility of infrastructures seem to support this, but at the same time, energy

consumers ought to engage more actively in the future production and consumption of

energy to solve contemporary energy challenges. The big question is how to square

this circle. One of the things Jasanoff points out is the need for participatory politics

to avoid that decision power stays in the hands of expert communities [34].

In Europe, despite recurring attempts to involve citizens in energy transitions,

energy companies still wait for an engaged consumer to emerge [35]. Introducing the

notion of a smart grid, future energy production will happen when the sun shines and

when the wind blows. Thus, to relive the smart grid during peak hours, consumers are

imagined to engage in the infrastructure as by the whip of a magic wand [36]. So how

might we think of energy engagement as something that does not happen as a natural

consequence of getting connected to the smart grid? How might think about energy

consumer as something else than mainly on the receiving end of the infrastructures

that supply energy? As we have shown, inspired by anthropological infrastructure

studies, there is more to both energy provision and engagement than that. Seen from

Rafiki in Kenya, energy engagement can take a number of possible shapes, and

material objects play a key role and part of an infrastructure that elicits attention and

anticipation of promissory futures from individuals and households. Thus, our

analysis addresses questions of infrastructural invisibility and the possible advantages

of making visible some of the infrastructural components, like energy plants, on

which we are dependent for our daily living [37]. But more than that it points to the

need to problematize basic assumptions such as ‘access’ as a highly distributed and

23

socio-technically organized phenomenon.

Daniel French’s [38] exploration of the historical origins of the processes

through which electricity infrastructure was made invisible in an American context is

an interesting comparison. French argues that resources are perceived and treated as a

fundamental right to a certain quality of life, and one of the ways of turning away

from thinking about electricity as a resource that effortlessly, passively, and without

any damage to the environment, flows, is to change the narrative. Today, he says,

knowledge about the resources from which electricity comes, has been delegated

away from the consumer. A reliable and ubiquitous supply, the hidden pipes, the

centralized, gathered distribution, the ease with which electricity flows out of our

nicely installed sockets, the ongoing and continuous silent work of the electrons all

contribute to making everyday life with electrical objects simple for citizens. The

blessing of infrastructures that have become increasingly invisible over time, has

become a curse; electricity infrastructure needs help to makes itself noticeable. To this

point we can add that the same thing goes for infrastructural ambiguities.

Though we certainly have no intention of romanticizing the difficulties

encountered by the people in Rafiki followed by an unstable electricity supply, the

analysis above tells a story about energy engagement largely occurring through a

visible infrastructure that allowed for observation, speculation, calculation, planning,

and foreshadowing. What might it take to bring about such an ‘object-oriented’

engaged practice elsewhere? What might it take for a strategy report, a wind turbine

or a solar panel design to elicit anticipation in consumers or would-be consumers?

Making electricity visible is a complicated affair, and one that must take into account

the ongoing folding of individuals, household, villages, governing bodies, landscapes,

the economy and companies into each other. Yet, the notion that infrastructural

objects and anticipatory practices can have the power to engage consumers

institutionally and politically is worth pursuing further.

24

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