The Future is Always on the Other Side

A Visual Ethnography of Uneven Infrastructure Development in Ghana and Morocco

Authors

  • Costanza Franceschini Leiden University
  • John Hanna TU Delft

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.20.1.8820

Abstract

This visual essay builds on collaborative and interdisciplinary research on infrastructure development as part of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus project ‘Sea-ing Africa: Tracing Legacies and Engaging Future Promises of “Big” Infrastructure Projects in Port City Regions in Ghana and Morocco’, as well as on Costanza Franceschini’s long-term ethnographic research on Sino-African infrastructural entanglements. The photographs were captured during four fieldwork trips to Morocco and Ghana between February 2023 and May 2025, and portray some of the infrastructures that are the object of our study and the subject of discussion with our research interlocutors. The analysis of infrastructure development as a socio-political terrain characterised by disconnection, suspension, incompleteness and disruption suggests that, rather than engendering distrust in a specific developmental model, infrastructural unevenness produces a constant mechanism of temporal shift, in which the future promised and dreamed of is perpetually out of reach.

Author Biographies

Costanza Franceschini, Leiden University

Costanza Franceschini is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the ethnographic study of Africa-China and Ghana-China relations, with a particular attention to Sino-African infrastructural entanglements, the localisation strategies of Chinese firms, and the everyday Afro-Chinese encounters, labour relations, linguistic formations, and brokerage practices.

John Hanna, TU Delft

John Hanna is an architect, lecturer and researcher. His research addresses the spatiality of urban conflicts with a focus on Paris and Beirut. John's wider research interests include Mediterranean and Red Sea port cities, quarantine spaces, architecture and literature, and urban histor(ies) of Africa and the Middle East, particularly in relation to colonialism and nationalism.

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Published

2026-09-30

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 1 (2026): Issue # 38 | African Dreams: Re-Enchantment Through Relational Ontologies

Section

Visual Essay

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Costanza Franceschini; John Hanna

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