Abstract This article offers a longitudinal study of the complex entanglements between infrastructure and sovereignty in the Horn of Africa. By analysing Ethiopia’s imperial transport corridors, the political economy of Djibouti’s Red Sea ports, and the Greater Nile Oil Pipeline between South Sudan, Khartoum, and global markets, we underline the co-production of infrastructure and sovereignty as a defining feature of regional politics in the last 150 years. In a region notorious for the redrawing of…

Drawing on the literature on the temporalities of infrastructure, this article focuses on the cyclical assertion of centralized authority through road-building in South Sudan, where roads are repeatedly built, projects paused, roads ruined, and then rebuilt again. The landscapes of South Sudan are littered with the decaying infrastructure projects of previous governments and political visions, seemingly pointing to a past of failed futures and the limits of government power. At the same time, the recurrent…

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