The electrification of East Africa followed an exceptionally uneven path. After about 50 years of relative neglect under colonial rule, the construction of hydroelectric dams moved electricity generation into the focus of late colonial development policy and became the major field of intervention for foreign donors after independence. The metrics of electricity attained a role as indicator and driver for economic growth, and therefore as a target figure in economic policy, one that was arguably not justified by their actual significance in the energy landscape of East Africa. This paper analyses both the global preconditions of this shift and its local repercussions. Rather than the physical visibility of electricity in the form of large dams and high-tension lines, the paper focuses on the processes that rendered electricity ontologically visible. It traces attempts by engineers, expert advisors, or development consultants to translate the complex information associated with the generation and consumption of electricity into calculable and comparable metrics. The paper scrutinises these commensuration processes in terms of the resources and knowledge they required, the frameworks of agency they opened, and the way they fed into wider discourses of development. It asks how the metrics of electricity themselves became part of the colonial and postcolonial politics of calculation, as they increasingly came to be seen as a medium for conceiving national economies. This trend was reinforced by the ascent of development economics in the 1950s and its influence on the ontological foundations of international development cooperation and post-independence nation-building. Because of the calculability and capital-intensity of its production, electricity lent itself perfectly to an economic policy based on macroeconomic aggregates and abstract growth models. Conversely, the electricity bias of international development agencies and the national government rendered rural, non-commercial, and non-productive energy use largely invisible.

中文翻译：

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以兆瓦为单位衡量进展：东非的殖民主义、发展和“看不见”的电网

东非的电气化道路异常崎岖。在殖民统治下相对忽视了大约 50 年之后，水电大坝的建设使发电成为晚期殖民发展政策的重点，并成为独立后外国捐助者干预的主要领域。电力指标作为经济增长的指标和驱动力发挥了作用，因此作为经济政策中的一个目标数字，可以说它在东非能源格局中的实际意义是不合理的。本文分析了这一转变的全球前提条件及其对当地的影响。与大坝和高压线形式的电力的物理可见性不同，本文关注的是使电力在本体论上可见的过程。它跟踪工程师、专家顾问或开发顾问将与电力生产和消耗相关的复杂信息转化为可计算和可比较的指标的尝试。本文从它们所需​​的资源和知识、它们打开的代理框架以及它们为更广泛的发展话语提供信息的方式等方面审查了这些比较过程。它询问电力指标本身如何成为殖民和后殖民政治计算的一部分，因为它们越来越被视为构想国民经济的媒介。1950 年代发展经济学的兴起及其对国际发展合作和独立后国家建设的本体论基础的影响强化了这一趋势。由于其生产的可计算性和资本密集度，电力完全适合基于宏观经济总量和抽象增长模型的经济政策。相反，国际发展机构和国家政府的电力偏见使农村、非商业和非生产性能源使用在很大程度上不可见。