Dam for Africa

Stephan F. Miescher is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is editor (with Luise White and David William Cohen) of African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History and (with Lisa A. Lindsay) of Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa and is author of Making Men in Ghana.

• AcknowledgmentList of AbbreviationsPrologueIntroductionPart I. The Volta River Project1. The Volta Project and the Promise of Modernization2. "Nkrumah's Baby": Realizing Akosombo within the Cold WarPart II. The Volta Aluminium Company3. Volta Aluminium Company: A U.S. Outpost in West Africa4. Working on VALCO's American IslandPart III. Settlements of Modernization5. "No One Should Be Worse Off": Resettlement6. Building the City of the FuturePart IV. Power Struggles7. Waiting for Light: Stories of Rural Electrification8. Electricity Politics, Droughts, Self-HelpEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

This is a detailed and fascinating case study in the research field of international dam and hydropower plant construction.- Aurelia Ohlendorf (Connections) To say that this book caters to scholars with a broad range of interests and opens several areas for further research is an understatement. With the diversity of sources, familiar and new untapped archives, such as those of the Volta River Authority and Electricity Company of Ghana, oral histories, and qualitative and quantitative surveys, A Dam for Africa is a new and refreshing perspective on the VRP.- Adwoa Opong - Chapman University (H-Net Reviews) By approaching the Akosombo Dam as a Cold War project built through skillful negotiation between the Americans and Soviets, Miescher is able to construct a truly international history of development that depicts the geopolitical significance of dam building for a wide array of global actors in the mid-twentieth century. His inclusion of voices from the diaspora allow us to see the dam as a truly pan-Africanist project. Finally, Miescher's work refines a body of scholarship that emphasizes the repressive, statist aspects of postcolonial development agendas.- Dimitri Diagne - University of California Berkeley (H-Environment) The book will surely become a classic on the history of dams and development, postcolonial nation-building, Cold War politics and electrification, as well as, more generally, on how to write nuanced, non- extractive histories that many people—those affected by such histories as well as students sitting in classrooms in a faraway continent—will value and learn from.- Julia Tischler – University of Basel (American Historical Review) A Dam for Africa is a monumental work and a wonderful addition to the rich literature on dams published in the last two decades.- Allen Isaacman - University of Minnnesota (Canadian Journal of African Studies) Miescher brings a fresh perspective to the debate on large dams. The depth of research, both archival and ethnographic, is extraordinary and emerges from Mieshcher's two-decade-long relationship with Ghana, some of which can be seen in the book's length and extensive endnotes—which make it an approachable read.- Satyajit Singh - University of California, Santa Barbara (Journal of Political Ecology)