Abstract
Salem reports that flight paths echo their disconnection despite being less visible than the African railways tracing the flows of colonial capitalism. At first glance, it would appear as though movement across airspace does not reproduce the problem of disconnection we see with the railways: African airspace is often busy, with flight paths stretching across different parts of the continent. Yet by paying attention to the spatiality of flight paths, it becomes clear that layovers, connections, destinations and the parceling out of airspace in a variety of ways reproduce the problem of disconnection, this time in postcolonial Africa. He argues that most flights across Africa were not direct, and that most flights leaving African airports are headed to destinations outside the continent. In a strange way, this repeats the disconnection of colonial (and postcolonial) railways.