Aeromobility, space and modernity: civil aviation in postcolonial African history

In this article, we transpose the history of African civil aviation onto a general overview of the continent’s postcolonial economic, social and political history. The aim is to explore how empirical case studies of aviation history can provide us with new insights into the contemporary history of the continent. We first propose that the concepts of aeromobility, split between aeromobility and the reconfiguration of space and aeromobility and the reconfiguration of modernity, and the concept of commercial speed can contribute to the structuring of these histories, because they allow us to combine explorations of the technical development, material production and consumption of aviation with imaginaries, expectations, politics, access, and social status. After introducing these terms, we will apply them to a brief and general history of civil aviation in Africa, based in a scattered and incomplete literature on the subject. At present, the continent’s aviation history remains to be written.