The “Department of Human Needs”: Renewable energy and the water–energy–land nexus in Zanzibar

In designating its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations invoked the “water–energy–land (WEL) nexus” to emphasize the interconnections between different policy sectors and accentuate the importance of an integrated approach to human and environmental welfare. Identifying the WEL nexus draws attention to the interplay of technical and moral values, the intersections or overlaps between these values, and the areas where values conflict, tradeoffs happen, and priorities are set or shifted. And within this WEL resource nexus, the development and expansion of renewable energy technologies has the potential to redefine and reorder the balance of values. The archipelago of Zanzibar, a semiautonomous protectorate within the East African nation of Tanzania, is currently making complex energy choices that highlight the significance and fragility of this resource nexus and the role of renewable energy in reshaping it. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research in peri‐urban Zanzibari communities to consider how the WEL nexus in Zanzibar is generated by and generative of complex gradations of value and to explore how the development of renewable energy technologies, particularly solar technology, is both entrenching and transforming the linkages between energy, water, and land in Zanzibar.