“But didn’t colonialism give them railways?” The “Cape-to-Cairo” railway was meant to stretch from Africa’s southern tip to Egypt in the north. It was the unrealised fantasy of an unruly cast of imperial hustlers, including most infamously Cecil Rhodes. As Dom Davies traces the legacy of this unfinished railway across Africa, he finds that tracks of colonial plunder, resource extraction, and white supremacy continue to haunt the continent. Talking to Adam Elliott-Cooper, Megan Jones, Uhuru Portia Phalafala, Sara Salem, and Jonny Steinberg, he explores the violence of the Cape-to-Cairo railway as both a symbolic and material crime. Using songs and poetry of resistance, he also unravels how fantasies of a connected Africa energised successive generations of activists, from Black Consciousness poets to Rhodes Must Fall. 

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Global History of Capitalism Project, Case Study #31: Rhodes Must Fall:
www.globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk

The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes:
www.info.publicintelligence.net

UCT Rhodes Must Fall Mission Statement:
www.lse.ac.uk

Dominic Davies. The Broken Promise of Infrastructure (Lawrence Wishart, 2023).

Megan Jones. "The Train as Motif in Soweto Poetry," Literature, Critique, and Empire Today 53:1 (2018), pp. 21-42.

Uhuru Portia Phalafala. Mine Mine Mine (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Sara Salem. "Cape to Cairo." The Architectural Review (June 2025), pp.50-53.

Dom Davies is Reader in English at City St George's, University of London. His research connects infrastructure to histories of empire and nationalism and explores its representation in literature and visual culture. He is also convenor of the Thinking Through Infrastructure Network (TTiN), which brings academics together with policy makers and organisers to ask how practices in the arts and humanities can build community and justice around sites of infrastructure failure.

Additional Voice-work: Elleke Boehmer, Nic Coetzer, Simon Davies and Rodwell Makombe