Stephan F. Miescher. A dam for Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022. 598 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50. Paper. ISBN: 9780253059956.

Part of review forum on "A dam for Africa" Few, if any, governmental initiatives have captured the collective Ghanaian political and cultural imagination over the sixty-plus years since Ghana's 1957 independence as the construction of the Akosombo Dam and the massive artificial lake it created (Lake Volta).Constructed under the auspices of a complicated Cold War-era public-private partnership shepherded by the government of Kwame Nkrumah, the dam promised Ghanaians everything from national electrification to an infrastructural bedrock upon which to build the young country's emergent industrial economy.Accompanying the dam as part of the broader Volta