Contested Waters: Historical Legacies of Hydropower Dams in the Rufiji Basin, Tanzania, ca. 1960s-2010s

Abstract

This research investigates the historical evolution, political dynamics, and imagined futures of large-scale hydropower projects in the Global South, revisiting a central theme in development and infrastructure studies. It uses Stiegler's Gorge mega-dam project in Tanzania as a case study to examine the role of large infrastructure in national development, modernisation, and nation-building. Focusing on the dam's protracted and contested development, the study examines how hydropower infrastructure can persist as a powerful socio-political concept across colonial and post-independence periods, despite prolonged delays, ghosting, and the absence of physical construction.<br /> Drawing on extensive archival research in Tanzania, Norway, and Sweden, complemented by key informant interviews with Tanzanian stakeholders and oral histories with local communities upstream and downstream of the Rufiji River, the study analyses the factors that contributed to the project's repeated postponement and eventual revival. Rather than treating delay as failure, the research conceptualises delay as a generative condition through which political visions, planning practices, and development narratives were sustained and reworked over time. The analysis highlights how environmental concerns, financial constraints, shifting aid regimes, and changing political leadership intersected to shape the project's trajectory.<br /> The study is structured around three analytical themes. First, it examines the postcolonial hydropower landscape in Tanzania, illustrating how state actors framed large dams as emblems of national progress and modernity. Second, it explores the role of international and transnational actors and the socio-technical assumptions embedded in hydropower planning and aid relationships. Third, it conceptualises Stiegler's Gorge as a 'delayed future' and an 'episodic ghost', demonstrating how infrastructural visions outlived political cycles and remained socially and politically active through enduring aspirations for energy self-sufficiency and economic transformation.<br /> The findings show that dormant infrastructure projects continue to influence policy debates, shape national development narratives, and re-emerge during moments of ideological or regime change. The eventual revival of the dam, rebranded as the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project, reflects not merely a continuation of past ambitions but a rearticulation of hydropower within new narratives of energy sovereignty and national pride. The thesis concludes that large-scale dam infrastructure is not simply a technical undertaking, but a contested socio-political construct continually reimagined over time. The study demonstrates how unbuilt infrastructure can function as a bridge between past aspirations and future development trajectories, revealing the cyclical and negotiated nature of infrastructural futures. It thus contributes a historically and geographically grounded post-colonial study that builds on work emphasising the temporality of megaprojects and how "waiting" is reframed as an active, politically charged condition for both citizens and planners.