Water, Energy, Access
Lisa Parks · University of Illinois Press eBooks · 2017
This chapter describes a particular rural configuration of Internet infrastructure in Zambia. It shows that access in this location is contingent on water resources, which not only generate hydroelectricity for the Zambian power grid but are also necessary for prospective Internet users' everyday survival in the community of Macha. Understanding the materialization of Internet infrastructure in rural Zambia works to destabilize dominant discourses that posit ICT (information and communication technology) diffusion and adoption in rural Africa as a straightforward path to “modernization,” “development,” and “global integration,” and instead points to local political, economic, and cultural challenges to the Internet's globalization. The chapter then foregrounds the struggles and contestations that are part of infrastructure development; the energy and biopower that infrastructures rely on; the relationality of water, transportation, and information systems; and the alternate ways that people imagine, use, or respond to infrastructure.