Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance (Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations)

Lavers, Tom

Oxford University Press（2024/10発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 336 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780192871213
• DDC分類 333.91009633

Full Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

After more than a decade of construction, Ethiopia is filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a controversial dam with the potential to transform the hydrology and politics of the Nile Basin. The GERD is the culmination of a dam building boom carried out over three decades and a key pillar of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front's (EPRDF) efforts to bring about an Ethiopian 'Renaissance'.

Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance provides a detailed examination of the domestic and international political dynamics that shaped Ethiopia's dam building, drawing on extensive primary research including more than a hundred interviews with politicians, technocrats, consultants, and donors. The authors reflect on the implications of Ethiopia's dam building for broader debates about the role of the state in late development, the dynamics of twenty-first century dam building, and the political economy of renewable energy transitions.

A central argument of the book is that Ethiopia's dam building is symbolic of the successes and failures of the EPRDF's 'developmental state'. On the one hand, this dams' boom enhanced electricity generation capacity, while constituting a key element of the state infrastructure investment that turned Ethiopia into one of the world's fastest growing economies. In contrast, a politically driven decision-making process undermined electricity planning, contributed to an unsustainable debt burden, and, ultimately, failed to provide reliable electricity access to key users. Following the EPRDF's collapse, the subsequent Prosperity Party government has taken steps away from the state-led development model of its predecessor, while labouring towards the final completion of the GERD.

Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham), Peace Medie (University of Bristol), and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (University of Oxford)

Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Notes on Authors
1: Dams, Power, and State-Led Development: Situating Ethiopia's Dams' Boom
2: Modernization, State Building, and the Hydraulic Mission in Imperial and Revolutionary Ethiopia
3: Political Vulnerability and the Origins of the EPRDF's Dams' Boom
4: Powering the 'Developmental State'
5: Salini: an Ethio-Italian Story
6: Upending the Hydropolitics of the Nile: From Cooperation to Unilateralism
7: Designing the Blue Nile Dam: Between the Hydropolitics of the Nile and an Ethiopian Renaissance
8: Electrifying Ethiopia, Consolidating Power: The Challenge of Distributing Electricity
9: Beyond the 'Developmental State': Prosperity and Conflict after the EPRDF
10: Ethiopia's Renaissance, Dams and State-Led Development in the Twenty-First Century
Glossary
References