Nairobi’s batteryscape: everyday electricity storage, energy justice, and infrastructural heterogeneity in urban Africa

Abstract

Renewable energy transitions, technological advances, and geopolitical disruptions have brought various forms of energy storage to the forefront of sustainability and infrastructure debates. Conversely, the socio-technical intricacies of everyday electricity storage by urban residents have received less attention in these discussions, although batteries have become an essential part of everyday life, especially in cities with heterogeneous infrastructure landscapes. In Nairobi, for example, batteries have become quotidian artefacts that form the basis of broader battery landscapes composed of different batteries and their materialities, idiosyncratic household electricity dispositifs, a broader landscape of private and public actors, and (lack of) regulation and governance. By proposing and using the notion of the batteryscape for these arrangements, this paper elaborates on the infrastructural significance of everyday household electricity storage for sustainable and just energy infrastructures. More specifically, it addresses issues of energy justice—largely, but not only, in terms of distributive injustices—and the heterogenization of individual as well as citywide electricity arrangements. Reflecting on limited state regulation and governance of domestic battery use and disposal in Nairobi, a nuanced reading of ongoing, battery-enabled energy transitions with their micro-materialities and everyday practices in African cities is called for to make pragmatic proposals for sustainability transitions, urban infrastructure planning, and the governance of both.