‘We live on estimates’: everyday practices of prepaid electricity and the urban condition in Maputo, Mozambique

Journal article

This article examines the transition to prepaid electricity happening in Maputo, Mozambique to reflect on the contemporary geographies of urban energy infrastructure and urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa and other cities of the South. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research conducted in 2013 and 2014, the article argues that prepayment constitutes a productive juncture in the urban experience of electricity infrastructure in Maputo’s post-colonial moment, not just a neutral technology or a disciplining technique of government (as argued by some scholarship). By focusing on the everyday practices of prepaid electricity of urban dwellers in neighborhoods where the ‘modern infrastructural ideal’ may never be fully realized, the article examines the multiple rationalities implicated in the use of the electricity infrastructure via prepayment and the organization of urban life it engenders (and of which it is also a product). As a result, the article makes a contribution to understanding the experience of urban energy in cities where ‘slum urbanism’, uncertainty and provisionality are dominant aspects of the urban condition.

Authors: Baptista, I

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1004–1019
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12314
• ISSN: 1468-2427
• Language: English
• Keywords: electricity; Mozambique; Maputo; energy infrastructure; urbanization; prepayment