Access to ‘formal’ electricity networks remains a key challenge in many African urban areas. Significant attention has been paid to how access to an electricity connection should be provided and by whom. Much less attention has been paid to the endless, pragmatic, situated everyday practices of maintenance and repair that keep infrastructures going, not always successfully. This talk explores the usefulness in conceptualizing electricity service provision as a precarious achievement, a process always-in-the-making. To this end, the talk will draw on ongoing fieldwork in Maputo, Mozambique with the national electricity company, EDM (Electricidade de Moçambique, E.P.) and its transition to an electricity network mediated by prepayment technologies. The talk will draw on an article recently published in the journal Urban Studies (journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098018776921).