Anticipating electric futures: situated imaginaries in Kampala’s informal transport

This article examines how Kampala’s minibus operators anticipate the transition to electric mobility before direct adoption. Based on 36 semi-structured interviews with drivers and conductors at Bwaise Taxi Park, this study explores how operators imagine electric minibuses within an informal transport system characterized by fragmented ownership, flexible labor arrangements, limited infrastructure, and uneven institutional inclusion. The findings show that anticipations of electric mobility are shaped by four interconnected dynamics: concerns about charging, battery range, breakdowns, and repair support; rumor-driven and peer-based information networks; anxieties about shifting professional identities and loss of mechanical expertise; and perceptions that electric minibuses are associated with wealthier groups and more formalized transport systems. These imaginaries emerge primarily through workplace conversations, everyday transport experiences, and encounters with infrastructural uncertainty rather than through formal media. Conceptually, the article proposes the notion of situated imaginaries to explain how technological futures are interpreted through occupational routines, material constraints, economic insecurity, and unequal urban conditions. By bringing together imaginative mobility, sociotechnical imaginaries, the politics of mobility, and mobility justice, the study shows that anticipations of electrification are socially embedded negotiations over work, recognition, affordability, and participation in future mobility systems.