Scarce, costly and uncertain: water access in Kibera

Carrying water on Kibera's railroad. Source: St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School Journalism Club

Kibera is not only Nairobi’s largest slum, but Africa’s largest slum. Now home to an estimated one million people, this settlement in the heart of Kenya’s capital began life as a home for Sudanese soldiers who had fought for the British army in WWII. Inherited upon independence in 1962, its questionable legitimacy has contributed to conditions of tremendous water scarcity and uncertainty.

Whilst residents once relied upon a nearby dam as their primary water source, today private vendors dominate. Locals face water costs that rival rents, waiting times that swallow up whole mornings and shortages that prevent basic washing and cooking practices. 

Much of the above mirrors the findings of Thompson et al. (2000) discussed in my last post. What’s new in Crow and Odaba’s (2009) article is a detailed analysis of the context. Through ethnographic research and investigative interviews the authors are able to dig deep under the surface of Kibera’s water quandary.

Beginning with Nairobi’s well documented water rationing programme, they explain how vendors in Kibera are supplied by a network of pipes, each of which is served for a different 3 days of the week. In doing so they introduce the role of corruption, and the way in which certain vendors are able to increase their supplies through illicit access to multiple pipes. 

Continuing on this theme of corruption they describe the role of cartels in the private water supply and the commonplace bribery of utility staff. Plumbers working for the Nairobi Water Company candidly discussed their willingness to selectively supply particularly groups of vendors whilst denying access to others, for the right price. 

At the consumer end the authors noted that wealth was a constraint on storage for Kibera residents. Whilst every respondent they spoke to chose to store water in their own homes, those that were unable to afford jerrycans or other suitable vessels had limited capacities. 

Crow and Odaba’s (2009) article reveals much that a regional analysis cannot. It has added corruption, cartel behaviour and storage capacity to my list of access constraints, to name but a few. In my next blog I am going to address a topic I have only so far skirted over, health and sanitation. 

Drawers of Water II

Collecting water in Nairobi. Source: AFP

Following in the footsteps of its 1967 predecessor, Drawers of Water II provides a much needed thirty year update on the state of domestic water use in East Africa. My interest in this study stems from both its significance for our understanding of urban water access and its attention to Nairobi and to Dar es Salaam — two cities that I have been fortunate enough to spend time in. 

In this blog I’m not going to attempt to give an overview of the study, or a critical analysis of its methods. Instead, I want to explore some of its main findings. Specifically I am going to discuss those disseminated by Thompson et al. (2000), a subsequent article to the main paper that took changes in urban water use as its central concern. I hope that this will give readers a good insight into some of the key issues relating to urban water access. 

Piped vs unpiped supplies — There is a consumption gap. Households with piped supplies are able to access 2.6 times more water than those with unpiped supplies (such as wells or springs). That said, the gap appears to be closing. Back in 1967 it stood at more like 8:1 piped vs unpiped. However, this has less to do with improvements in the latter and more to do with the deterioration of the former…

Declining piped supplies — Municipal piped systems appear to be collapsing in large parts of East Africa. In many cases the physical infrastructure remains functional, but the water services that once sustained urban households are no longer operating. This change has forced people to look elsewhere for their water supplies… 

Rise of private suppliers — In response to the growing demand for off grid water alternatives, kiosks and vendors have emerged across the region. This brings with it a host of new questions about how water is priced and what that means for its uses. A particularly important finding in this regard is that hygiene is one of the first things to suffer under conditions of domestic water scarcity. 

Increased waiting times — Another consequence of the increased dependency on unpiped supplies has been a hike in the time spent waiting at the tap (or well, or kiosk). Thompson et al. reported average return times from the source of 21.4 minutes in 1997 up from 9.3 minutes in 1967. These changes come with a huge opportunity cost for urban inhabitants.

These findings are critical to our understanding of urban water access in East Africa. My only gripe with DWII is that there is little room within the study for a more detailed analysis of how these issues are manifest in particular urban environments. In my next blog I will turn to Crow and Odaba’s (2009) article on Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, in order to contextualise what I have discussed above. 

What do we mean by access?

The UN defines access to safe water in terms of “the proportion of the population with access to an adequate amount of safe drinking water located within a convenient distance from the user’s dwelling”.

This certainly seems like a fair place to start. It incorporates quantity (an adequate amount being 20L), quality (safe drinking water indicating an improved source) and proximity (with a convenient distance set at 200m). What’s more, it allows us to quantify access, with the latest statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa standing at 56% for rural provinces and 83% for the region’s cities.

However, there is a danger here. And that danger is that these aggregate statistics can obscure the complexity of what access really means. The emphasis on proximity to a water source ensures that rural Africa will always emerge as the key concern. But, as Satterthwaite (2002) points out, urban dwellers living within 50m of a water pipe often stand as little chance of gaining access to sufficient water resources as rural dwellers who are 20km from their nearest source — “proximity does not mean access”.

In this blog I will delve further into the question of how Africa’s urban population are enabled or constrained from accessing water. I will review various articles on the topic, looking at both trends across the continent and at detailed case studies of individual urban settlements. Following the Water and Development course I intend to take an interdisciplinary approach, discussing not only matters of population density and water pricing regimes, but also the impacts of particular water sources and infrastructures. 

In my first entry, due shortly, I will be exploring the contribution made by Thompson et al’s (2001) pivotal study, Drawers of Water II, and what it means for our understanding of water access in urban East Africa.