1 - Infastructuring the last mile: Development, Chinese tech, and densification of Ghana’s rural network

Paper Abstract:
China’s infrastructure footprint in Africa is expanding to the rural last mile along with growing state initiatives to bridge the digital divide across the continent. Supported by Huawei’s RuralStar base station solution and financed by a Chinese loan, Ghana rolled out a large-scale rural telephony project (RTP) to densify its mobile network in 2020. Drawing from interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this article elucidates the multi-layered yet contradictory techno-politics of connecting the last mile in Ghana. Taking a historical perspective, this article explains how RTP emerges as a “third model” to datafy the last mile by (re)politicizing Ghana’s digital divide in the 21st century. While the Ghanaian state views RTP as a means to restore its political legitimacy, telecom operators see it as a source of value creation and constantly negotiate the location and revenue sharing of the rural sites. To mitigate geopolitical risks, Huawei strategically de-politicizes the project and reduces its level of participation, which greatly hinders local technological empowerment. Viewing RTP as an infrastructure-in-the-making, this article demonstrates how it assembles political, sociotechnical, and ecological forces to develop the last mile, which leads to selective densification and datafication of the rural network and meanwhile confronts shifting tropical materialities in maintaining its stability. This article presents an infrastructure lens to observe the dynamics of China-Africa tech engagement and sheds new light on the intricate entanglements between state, infrastructure, and nature, which shall hold implications for future last-mile projects.