In this article, I develop a political ecology analysis of Vanuatu's grid electricity policies, with a specific focus on Espiritu Santo Island. I show how the global political economy looms large in shaping the island's energy geographies. Colonial legacies, ideologically conflictive donor aid programmes, multinational corporate legal discords, parliamentary political caprices and the vicissitudes of the local environment all intersect to shape the spatial dynamics of electricity access that raises numerous energy justice concerns. The development of the island's electricity infrastructure is not neutral; rather, it is a socio-technical product of these political economy mediations.
Colonial wildlife conservation initiatives in Africa emerged during the late 19th century, with the creation of different laws to restrict hunting as well as with the setting up of game reserves by colonial governments. Key influential figures behind this emergence were aristocratic European hunters who had a desire to preserve African game populations—ostensibly protecting them from settler and African populations—so that elite sports hunting could persevere on the continent. These wildlife conservation measures became more consolidated at the turn of the 20th century, notably due to the 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa—an agreement between European imperial powers and their colonial possessions in Africa to improve wildlife preservation measures—and with the establishment of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire in 1903. This Society, made up of aristocrats, hunter-naturalists, and former government officials, used the influence of its members to advocate for greater wildlife conservation measures in Africa. The wildlife preservation agenda of the Society was largely geared around restricting hunting praxis (and land access) for African populations, while elite European hunting was defended and promoted as an imperial privilege compatible with environmental outcomes. Starting in the 1920s, members from the Society played a key role in setting up Africa's early national parks, establishing a key conservation praxis that would continue into the late colonial and postcolonial periods. After World War II, colonial wildlife conservation influence reached its zenith. African populations were displaced as national parks were established across the continent.
In this paper, we explore the practices and spaces of mobile phone charging in The Gambia and Sierra Leone through the lens of 'electricity scarcity' as a means to conceptualise electricity access in West Africa. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is seen as the leading authority on the state of global energy access, and is frequently cited by government and non-government bodies. We, however, suggest that the IEA's quantitative and binary framing of electricity access is analytically problematic for understanding energy poverty. Using ethnographic methods, including observation and semi-structured interviews, we provide insights into the changing socio-technological, socio-political and socio-economic dimensions of mobile phone charging including its relationship with the built environment. Comparing mobile phone charging in The Gambia and Sierra Leone, clearly shows that the notion of absolute electricity scarcity which is promulgated by IEA statistics only offers a limited picture of energy poverty, especially at the locale. Instead, drawing on political ecology scholarship, we propose a concept of political electricity scarcity as an approach enables a more human-centred and nuanced understanding of how energy poverty operates or is mitigated through community-based structures or at a household level. By reframing energy poverty issues through this lens, we are able to illustrate the role that political economy dynamics play in shaping the electricity flows in rural Sub-Saharan Africa and who ultimately gets what kind of electricity access.
