Image: McMaster Museum of Art, Toronto
Curated by Nnamdi Nnake, ‘Connected Histories: The Telegraph in Nigeria’ runs from September 1 through December 4, 2026.
The exhibition examines how telegraph networks intersected with Nigeria’s economic and sociopolitical development. The project draws on the thesis research of Nnake, a PhD candidate in History at McMaster University, to examine how local factors shaped the trajectory of telegraph technology in Nigeria.
Through collaboration with Ingenium and Northwestern Libraries, the exhibition features real telegraph apparatus, practice sets and large-format images depicting Nigerian scenes of the technology in use.
Nnake treats images as historical evidence rather than merely as illustrations of telegraph technology or infrastructure, reading them for what they reveal about the material and social conditions under which Africans operated Nigeria’s telegraph systems.
The research examines the contributions of African workers to sustaining Nigeria’s telegraph networks between 1925 and 1945. It also shows how visual analysis makes African labour, expertise and technical practices visible in ways that textual sources cannot, from daily operations to maintenance and repairs.
