In A Dam for Africa, Stephan Miescher explores the history of Akosombo Dam, its role as part of the broader Volta River Project, and its influence on national and pan-African visions for a postcolonial technological future. Miescher draws on a large body of previously underutilized archival sources, as well as extensive interviews with government officials and citizens across regions most directly impacted by the construction of the dam and the resulting resettlement that came in its wake
~Jennifer Hart, Wayne State University
A Dam for Africa is a stunningly rich examination of Ghana's Volta River Project, an ambitious infrastructural / development scheme that has played a central role in 20th century Ghanaian and African, history. At its core, the book probes the multiple meanings that the project's principle manifestation—the hydroelectric Akosombo Dam—had for Ghanaians, Africans, local bureaucrats, international governments, and transnational business interests from c. 1950 to 2010, a sixty-year period that stretches across not only the colonial / postcolonial divide, but several periods of ranging political ideologies, economic realities, and international transformations.
~Nate Plageman, Wake Forest University
Based on meticulous archival research carried out across the globe and on countless interviews, A Dam for Africa engages themes as diverse as decolonization, gender, technology, and popular culture in this riveting account of the making of Ghana's Akosombo Dam. Miescher's rich, multiscalar analysis is as adept at reconstructing the Cold War geopolitics of aid and development that form the negotiated prehistory of the dam, as it is at recounting the personal stories of displacement, relocation, and disillusionment of ordinary women and men whose livelihoods and homes, burial grounds, and religious sites were washed away by the Volta Lake. Miescher's A Dam for Africa is quite simply a monumental work.
~Jean Allman, Washington University in St. Louis
A Dam for Africa is a truly spectacular contribution to global debates about energy justice. Rather than eschewing the contradictions of sustainable development, Miescher explores them with tremendous sensitivity and subtlety. The result is a rich, complex, innovative history that changes the terms of scholarship across a wide range of fields, including African history, global environmental history, the history of technology, and infrastructure studies.
~Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University
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
