Reviewed by:

• Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence by Abena Dove Osseo-Asare
• Damilola Adebayo (bio)

Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence By Abena Dove Osseo-Asare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xx + 278.

In Atomic Junction, a history of the development of nuclear power in post-colonial Ghana, Abena Dove Osseo-Asare makes a highly compelling case that technological scale is not always proportional to socio-political significance. In the present historical literature on (Western) technologies in Africa, scale has often determined which topic gets researched or neglected. This explains why Large Technical Systems, especially hydroelectric dams that were built during the 1950s and 1960s, have received more attention than, for instance, the history of indigenous attempts to manufacture cars. The question of scale also explains why the only significant publication until now on the history of "nuclearity" in Africa is Gabrielle Hecht's Being Nuclear (MIT Press, 2014), a ground-breaking study of the geopolitics of uranium mining in multiple African countries, including Gabon, Madagascar, Namibia, and South Africa.

Strictly from a point of view of technological scale, Ghana cannot be considered a nuclear power. It has no uranium deposit and only managed to secure a 30kW Miniature Neutron Source Reactor from the Chinese government in 1994. This was after several decades of wavering domestic political support and failed diplomatic negotiations with the major powers across the Iron Curtain. Yet, as Osseo-Asare argues, African technology stories cannot afford to be "technology-centered." "A technology-centered story," Osseo-Asare contends, "foregrounds the challenges of importing equipment, a struggle to 'catch up,' with African scientists destined to be 'global shadows'" (p. 12). This approach, the author further argues, "engages in endless handwringing about the technological underachievements of African scientists that falls just short of questioning their intellectual capacity" (p. 12).

Although the reactor eventually installed was small, Osseo-Asare proposes that Ghana's atomic dream was grand, when examined from a "manpower and human capacity-building" approach. This approach "re-centers the story of post-independence in the lived experience of real people" (p. 11). The author introduces the concept of "scientific equity" to explain the quest of newly independent states in Africa and Asia for equal access to scientific knowledge and goods. For Osseo-Asare, "scientific equity implies a level playing field in terms of actual intellectual capabilities and intelligence between people living in different countries" (p. 6).

Seen through the lens of manpower and scientific equity, Ghanaians were not merely "subjects" (imitator or inferior duplicator) of nuclear [End Page 586] technology. Led by Kwame Nkrumah, during the 1960s Ghanaian politicians and scientists contributed to international debates on the risks of atomic bomb testing in the Sahara Desert by the French government, and implications for West Africa (ch. 2). Ghanaian scientists were equal partners with their colleagues in Western atomic laboratories, having acquired doctorates in nuclear physics and related sciences at some of the best universities in the world, from the Soviet Union (despite the challenge of learning Russian) to the United States (ch. 3). These scientists led Ghana to meet global radiation standards, became International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors for nuclear programs in other countries, shaped global policies on nuclear science, and lobbied different countries, including the United Arab Republic, India, and China, for a reactor of their own (ch. 4 and 5). The "real people" in Osseo-Asare's research were not only Ghanaian scientists. They also included everyday people, particularly the residents of the Kwabenya neighborhoods whose ancestral domains became "atomic lands" expropriated by the government, often leading to conflicts over property rights (ch. 6).

Atomic Junction is a great feat of multidisciplinary research presented in a tightly written and lucid narrative. It combines personal and family history, oral interview, and participant observation (which resulted in the production of a documentary film available online at www.atomicjunction.com), with abundant references to newspapers and official correspondence in multiple languages, including Russian and Chinese. Remarkably, this research also consulted more than four hundred relevant secondary publications and reports.

Osseo-Asare...