Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Resistance in Nigeria’s Rural Solar Electrification: An Ethnographic Study

Rural solar electrification in Nigeria is often theorised as a straightforward technical deployment problem, yet persistent implementation failures, community resistance, and uneven adoption outcomes suggest that sociotechnical factors, including community imaginaries of modernity, technology trust, gender power relations, and competing visions of development, are constitutive of electrification trajectories in ways that technical and economic analysis cannot capture. This study investigates sociotechnical imaginaries and forms of community resistance in Nigeria's rural solar electrification, applying Science and Technology Studies perspectives within an extended ethnographic design across three rural community sites in Kano State, Ebonyi State, and Delta State. Fieldwork spanning 18 months per site involved participant observation at community meetings, solar system operation sessions, and maintenance encounters, supplemented by 86 narrative interviews with households, solar technicians, community leaders, and programme staff. Discourse analysis and grounded theory were applied iteratively to construct conceptual models of community-technology relationships. The study makes an original contribution to sociotechnical theory by identifying four distinct archetypes of community solar electrification imaginaries, designated Conditional Modernity, Sceptical Pragmatism, Resource Capture, and Collective Emancipation, each generating different adoption and resistance dynamics. Findings challenge the dominant deficit model of community resistance in rural electrification literature and propose a relational legitimacy framework as a theoretical alternative for understanding community-technology relationships in Nigerian rural electrification contexts. Keywords: sociotechnical imaginaries, rural electrification, community resistance, Nigeria, ethnography.