This article contributes to shaping the discourse on unequal geographies of infrastructure and governance in the global South, opening up new ways of thinking through politics, practices and modalities of power. Conceptually, informality, governance and everyday urbanism are drawn on to unpack how the formal encounters the informal in ways that (re)configure infrastructure geographies and governance practices. This conceptual framing is empirically employed through an analysis of electricity access in Accra, Ghana, highlighting how residents navigate unequal electricity topographies, engage in self-help initiatives, and negotiate informal networks and formal governance practices. The spatiality of the electricity infrastructure has created inequity and opportunities for exploitation by ‘power-owners’ and ‘power-agents’ who control and manage the electricity distribution network and, in turn, privately supply power. Electricity connections are negotiated, access is monetised and illegality excused on grounds of good-neighbourliness, thereby producing and perpetuating everyday politics of ‘making do’. Community movements, everyday acts of improvisation, and incremental modifications are shown to influence the workings of formal institutions of government and shape uneven power relations and experiences of inequality. Such an understanding of how marginalised residents navigate the electricity topographies of Accra reveals a more nuanced politics of infrastructure access, which reflects the complex realities of hybridised modalities of governance and the multiple everyday dimensions of power that shape urban space. The article concludes that informality should not be recognised as failure but as a sphere of opportunity, innovation and transition.

本文有助于塑造关于全球南方基础设施和治理不平等地理的话语，通过政治、实践和权力模式开辟新的思维方式。从概念上讲，非正式性、治理和日常城市化被用来解开正式如何以（重新）配置基础设施地理和治理实践的方式遇到非正式。这一概念框架通过对加纳阿克拉电力接入的分析得到实证应用，突出了居民如何应对不平等的电力地形、参与自助倡议以及协商非正式网络和正式治理实践。电力基础设施的空间性造成了不公平和机会，让控制和管理配电网络并反过来私人供电的“电力所有者”和“电力代理人”进行剥削。电力连接经过谈判，接入被货币化，并以睦邻为由为非法行为辩解，从而产生并延续了“凑合”的日常政治。社区运动、日常即兴表演和渐进式修改被证明会影响正式政府机构的运作，并塑造不平衡的权力关系和不平等的经历。对边缘化居民如何驾驭阿克拉电力地形的这种理解揭示了基础设施接入的更微妙的政治，这反映了混合治理模式的复杂现实以及塑造城市空间的多种日常权力维度。本文的结论是，不应将非正式性视为失败，而应将其视为机会、创新和转型的领域。