Powering the Public: Rewiring the post-conflict city

Electricity is not only critical infrastructure for contemporary human life. Power systems are among the first casualties of conflict. Turning the lights off is a weapon of war. This project aims to document experiences of rebuilding energy systems after war. What materials, knowledge, and capital are used—by whom? The project analyses post-conflict reconstruction of electricity infrastructure in Hargeysa, the capital city of Somaliland, a self-declared independent state in north-west Somalia. Now home to over a million people, Hargeysa was destroyed by bombardments in 1988 and became the capital of a state-building project in the 1990s. Local businesses powered the post-conflict city, establishing micro-grids as a state-led electricity project floundered. My research foregrounds how, as nascent power suppliers, companies navigated the politics of providing for the public amid an encompassing state-building project, merging over time to create a city-wide utility company with investments in renewable energy.