Introduction: The Perils and Possibilities of African Roads

Roads and automobility on the African continent are commonly encountered with a rather ambivalent stance, both by Africans and Africanist scholars. This ambivalence emerges from what Adeline Masquelier describes as the 'profoundly contradictory nature of roads as objects of both fascination and terror' (2002: 381). In her widely received article on 'road mythographies' surrounding Niger's Route 1, Masquelier draws a vivid picture of the 'contradictory aspects of the road as a space of both fear and desire' (ibid.: 831). She highlights, in particular, how roadside residents perceive automotive travel as 'a process fraught with risky and contradictory possibilities' (ibid.: 832). A 'pioneering study in the ethnography of roads' (Campbell 2012: 498), Masquelier's account of people's profound ambivalence towards roads, mobility and transport in post-colonial Niger has been a source of inspiration for a range of scholars who have explored in a similar vein the intricate entanglement of people with (auto)mobility, space and modernity, both in Africa and elsewhere (see, for example, Khan 2006; Klaeger 2009; Dalakoglou 2010; Hart 2011). Five articles in this volume press ahead with the analytic theme of the ambivalence of roads. Through their historic analyses and ethnographic observations, the assembled case studies from Senegal, Ghana, Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania give a strong sense of how the perils and possibilities of roads, roadsides, traffic and transport have been and continue to be embraced in the everyday lives of colonial and post-colonial subjects.

This focus on road-related practices, experiences and discourses in Africa echoes the recent concern of many scholars with (auto)mobility and movement that has been driven in great part by the so-called 'mobility turn' in the humanities and social sciences (see, for example, Urry 2007; Canzler et al. 2008; Vannini 2010; Cresswell and Merriman 2011). This interest has brought forth a series of collaborative publication projects that are worth mentioning. The most influential is the volume edited by Featherstone et al. on Automobilities (2005), assembling the perspectives of sociologists and human geographers on mostly European and North American cultures of mobility. It was preceded by Miller's ethnographically rich collection on Car Cultures (2001) in various parts of the world and by the anthropological volume on the social impact of roads in South-East Asia, entitled On the Road (Colombijn 2002). The most recent collaborative works are presented by Vannini (2009), Snead et al. (2009), Cresswell and Merriman (2011), and Vergunst and Árnason (2012), who approach roads, routes and other pathways as well as various modes of (not necessarily automotive) mobility from a range of disciplinary perspectives, again for the most part in North Atlantic contexts. The latest venture is this series is the special issue of Mobilities (2012, Vol. 7, No. 4) dedicated to the theme of 'Roads and Anthropology'. As the guest editors note in their introduction (Dalakoglou and Harvey 2012: 460), the ethnographic studies take advantage of the possibilities that roads offer for the exploration of current and locally specific 'socio-cultural conditions'. Moreover, and anticipating the path taken by the present collection on African roads, these studies raise thematic concerns that speak 'to a more general sense of promise and uncertainty associated with the idiom and materiality of (auto)mobility' (ibid., emphasis added).

One major contribution by Africanist scholars to this emerging series of collaborative works is Speed of Change (Gewald et al. 2009), a volume assembling historical and anthropological case studies on various phenomena related to motor vehicles in colonial and post-colonial Africa.¹ Prior to that, and despite the recognition of Africa as a highly mobile continent (de Bruijn et al. 2001; Hahn and Klute 2007), writings about roads, transport and automobility in African contexts appear to have been rather scattered, unsystematic, and sometimes mere by-products of fieldwork on other topics.² However, in recent years, the growing scholarly awareness of the crucial role that these road-related phenomena play for the continent's socio-cultural, political and economic realities, in both past and present, has triggered a number of (individual and collaborative) research projects focused on roads and transport.³ Partially represented in this...