Kigali's Liquid Futures: Corporeal Infrastructures and Hydraulic Politics

In this discussion, Samuel Shearer examines the triad of mechanical, physical, and social infrastructures that make up Kigali¿s hydraulic present and designs on its future. Most Kigali residents access their water in spite of, not because of the city¿s hydraulic infrastructure, completing the H2O distribution system with their bodies. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in Kigali, I argue that practices designed by Kigali residents to circumvent the city¿s water shortage in the present are not just filling a distribution gap, but are being incorporated into plans for the city¿s hydraulic future as a collective source of private gains.