Since programmes to expand electricity infrastructure resuscitated twenty years ago, the politics of electricity south of the Sahara has been in dire need of a continental synthesis that puts the variegated national trajectories into broader perspective. Ten years ago, Electric Capitalism – to date the best attempt at a synthesis – made considerable progress, even though the book centred, understandably, on the southern half of the continent. The reference to Electric Capitalism is relevant for two reasons. Firstly, because Christopher Gore contributed a chapter to that volume, of which the core argument does not differ much from the one developed in this book. Secondly, because if Electric Capitalism projected its distributive analysis of electricity in South Africa to the rest of the continent, Electricity in Africa does likewise with sectoral reform in Uganda.

In the continental synthesis that has yet to be written, the chapter on sectoral reform will inevitably have to receive considerable attention. In this sense, Christopher Gore's book makes several interesting contributions. Although he is interested in the reforms initiated after Museveni's accession to power in 1986, the book rightly underlines the historical continuities between the colonial and the postcolonial eras, in both the generation and the distribution of electricity. Thus, the book cogently brings to our attention the ways in which the narratives forged by colonial authorities about their own dam-building programme (i.e. the construction of Owen Falls and Bujagali), as well as the recurrent neglect of renewables after independence, cast a long shadow on the reforms undertaken by Museveni's regime since the early 2000s. In particular, Gore's emphasis on the path dependency involved in linking the overall fortune of sectoral reform to the success of the Bujagali Dam project is truly enlightening. Equally informative, albeit perhaps insufficiently explored, is the focus on the generalized challenge of making the provision of electricity available to broad segments of the population, and particularly to those on low incomes. Across African countries, this challenge has almost invariably been adjudicated by ignoring the needs of the poor, or, at best, by subordinating them to the superior interests of industrialization. Finally, also revealing is the central role of the World Bank as both ideologue and catalyst of reform and, more originally, the serious distortions provoked by the World Bank in its capacity as financier to both sides in the dialogue between government and civil society.

In fact, the scant attention paid by the World Bank and the Ugandan bureaucrats in charge of reform to the social and political context is the main novel argument in Gore's book with respect to his chapter from 2009. The hypothesis is suggestive, and the learning deployed by civil society organizations to confront reform offers a promising avenue of research to better understand the recent transformations in the political economies of electricity across the continent. Unfortunately, and perhaps as a result of insufficient editorial work, the same cannot be said of other innovations: namely, the first chapter, which sets the Ugandan case against the continental background and proposes governance as the central analytical lens for the remainder of the text; and the fifth chapter, or epilogue, which describes the more recent turn towards China and the notion of energy justice. In line with the somewhat misleading title of the book (the subtitle appears more appropriate), the first chapter aims to provide an overall description of the politics of electricity across African countries. Its content could have been more adequately entitled ‘Dams and China’. By overemphasizing dam construction, the richly developed argument about the intimate connection between generation and distribution – i.e. how to attain sufficient earnings from distribution to ensure Bujagali's financial sustainability – is undermined to some extent. Also regrettable is that China fails to feature in the analysis again until the last, concluding chapter. Therefore, when Chinese actors are reintroduced into the Ugandan case, as a result of Museveni's discontent with traditional donors, their influence is only loosely connected to the central argument made in the book about the inattention to the social and political context. Also, a debatable proposition throughout the book is the frequent identification of governance with political economy, which only diminishes the explanatory reach of the latter. This becomes palpable when the governance framework is applied to the empirical analysis of reforms in Uganda. The somewhat naïve implication is that good governance would have led to better results in access and provision, which contradicts the concomitant argument about the vested interests of the World Bank in pushing through reform.

Christopher Gore's book is a good step in the direction of the desired continental synthesis of two decades of political economy in relation to electricity in African countries. His chapter from 2009 already represented a remarkable contribution. Against narratives that all too often stress the imperviousness of African electricity sectors, Gore's emphasis on transformation brings fresh air to the discussion.