Research Project

Kilowatts, megawatts and power: Electric territorialities of the state in the peripheries of Ghana and Tanzania

In this project I seek to understand how African states govern long-neglected peripheries. To do so, I seek inspiration in works in Political Geography that posit strategic bargains as an explanation to the strategies toward peripheries of central state bureaucracies. I start by asking who got grid electricity, when and how in two schemes of grid electrification in northern Ghana (1989-2012) and southeastern Tanzania (2004-15). The contrast between both sequences highlights the politico-territorial linkages that shaped the trajectories of access and provision, as well as the alignments and disalignments between those trajectories and the prevailing national settlements in the electricity sector.

My research kicked off in September 2012. Fieldwork in Ghana was carried out in 2013, and in Tanzania in 2014 and 2015.

The dissertation was successfully defended on April 2018.

Supervisors

Prof. Dr. Paul Nugent

Dr. Thomas Molony

Latest publications

• Pellicer-Sifres, Victoria, Sergio Belda-Miquel, Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez, and Alejandra Boni. 2018. “Learning, transformative action, and grassroots innovation: Insights from the Spanish energy cooperative Som Energia.” Energy Research & Social Science 42: 100–111.
• Hönke, Jana, Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez. 2018. "Mobilising security and logistics through an African port: A controversies approach to infrastructure." Mobilities 13(2): 246-260.
• Hönke, Jana, Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez. 2017. "A topolographical approach to infrastructure: Political topography, topology and the port of Dar es Salaam." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(6): 1076-95.
• Belda-Miquel, Sergio, Alejandra Boni, Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez, and Jordi Peris. 2016. "Are rights-based approaches helping (re)politicise development NGOs? Exploring the Spanish case." International Development Planning Review 38(2): 135-57.
• Cuesta-Fernandez, Ivan. 2015. “Mammoth dams, lean neighbors: assessing the bid to turn Ethiopia into East Africa´s powerhouse.” In A New Scramble for Africa? The Rush for Energy Resources, ed. Soren Schölvin. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 93-110.
• Peris-Blanes, Jordi, Sergio Belda-Miquel, and Ivan Cuesta-Fernandez. 2013. "Educating development professionals for reflective and transformative agency: insights from a master degree in Spain." In Human Development and Capabilities: Re-Imagining the University of the 21st Century, eds. Melanie Walker and Alejandra Boni-Aristizábal. Abingdon: Routledge, 192-203.

(full academic CV, ORCID)

Less regularly than I would like, I also publish research-based briefs on my blog: Electric Territorialities

Academic Qualifications

MA Politics and Democracy, Spanish Distance Learning University, Spain (2011)

MSc Power Generation: Renewables, Public University of Navarre (2008)

MA Development and International Cooperation, Instituto Hegoa, University of the Basque Country (2005)

BEng Industrial Engineering, Technical University of Valencia (2001)