Drawing comparisons in Dar es Salaam

Transporting water by bicycle. Source: All Africa

Inspired by Stine’s engagement with Kjellén’s (2000) paper, I thought I would give it a read for myself. Having been to Dar es Salaam a few years ago I wanted to take the opportunity to learn a bit more about its water situation and reflect on any similarities it might have with the other urban areas that I have considered so far. 

Kjellén’s paper kicks off with a really interesting analysis of Dar’s physical water resources, a rare find in the literature on urban water. By revealing that the city’s physical water supplies are plentiful she gives evidence to an idea that has emerged in much of the literature that I have consulted so far. That is, that the problems here are political and not hydrological. That in Dar es Salaam, as elsewhere, a great deal of the challenge in terms of access derives from a horribly neglected secondary water supply. 

As appears to be the norm, the gap in supply is filled by private water vendors. These entrepreneurial individuals access water where the piped network is available, either legally or illegally (as was noted in Kibera) and then sell it on at a profit to those with no supply of their own. Something that was new to me in Kjellén’s account was that vendors in Dar es Salaam readily transport water around the city by bicycle, charging up to five times as much for a delivery as they would for someone ‘waiting at the tap’. 

For Kjellén private vendors are an ‘interim’ solution, a pop-up industry that has filled the gap whilst pipe issues are resolved. But with their presence clearly persisting into the early stages of the 21st century (see Ayalew et al. 2013) a number of questions begin to emerge. For instance, what has the growth of private vendors meant for the likelihood of piped network reform? Or, how does their existence relate to the neoliberal forms of governance that I discussed in my last blog? I hope to begin to address these in my next few blogs as I focus in on the issues of privatisation and independent water providers. 

Privatisation, participation and potable water

Mathare valley slums, Nairobi. Source: Thomas Mukoya / Reuters

Neoliberal reform has had a marked impact on Africa and on the wider global south. The 1980s saw structural adjustment programmes by the World Bank and IMF intent on opening up the domestic markets of developing countries to global trade (see Cammack 2004). The outcome has been an extension of market doctrine and, as regards water in the urban environment, the idea that the consumer must always pay. 

It’s the concern of Jaglin’s (2002) article that in those parts of SSA where consumers can’t stump up the cost, participatory action has become the key mechanism of cost recovery. That is to say that where they cannot afford to pay in full, individuals and user groups are made to carry out infrastructure maintenance, local network enhancements and management system improvements by themselves (see my last blog on Kisumu for a groundwater-based example).

At first glance this might seem a clever way to ensure that the poor aren’t left behind in a market-orientated economy. However, participatory action carries with it some quite considerable drawbacks. Of the two that I will mention here, the first is that it places the responsibility for infrastructural improvements at the feet of the people who have the least means to carry them out. Where a tax based system might be used to ensure equitable access across an urban area, participatory measures can only serve to entrench inequalities. 

The second, and related, criticism is that participatory action encourages a continued reliance on informal resellers and networks, as opposed to the extension of better quality services to low income neighbourhoods. Whilst unpiped supplies have some recognised benefits (see Solo 1999), they tend to result in less potable water and associated problems with sanitation (see blog here). 

I hope that this post has provided some insights into the relationship between one of the main development theories and the problems of urban water access in Africa. If anyone wants to dig deeper into this topic Jaglin’s paper is definitely worth a look! 

Groundwater, growth and governance: water access in Kisumu

Typical plot in Manyatta. Source: Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Flickr

Kisumu is Kenya’s third largest city and the heart of life on Lake Victoria. Much like Kibera, its history has been closely affected by Kenya’s colonial past. The lifting of restrictions on rural-urban migration in 1963 saw the city’s population grow five-fold in twenty years. Such rapid demographic change placed demands on the city’s water resources that could not be met by the municipal council. 

In Drangert et al’s (2002) paper, on which much of this post is based, the authors note that the local authorities struggled to maintain the city’s piped network, and that it soon began to decline in much the same way as the supplies of those cities studied in DWII. It appears that in the years since water provision has been privatised with a view to improving its commercial viability (see KIWASCO). 

With the deterioration of the piped network local residents turned to the ground beneath their feet to make up the shortfall. By 1999 over 379 hand-dug wells had emerged in the peri urban areas of Manyatta and Migosi, supplying an estimated 664,000 m3/year through local kiosks and vendors.

The immediate question that arises is that of sustainability. MacDonald et al (2012) argue that there is an insufficient availability of high-yielding boreholes in Africa for the predication of rapid urbanisation based on groundwater supplies. However, evidence from MacDonald and Davies (2000) suggests that yields upwards of 5 m3/day are often encountered in fractured basement geology of the type present in Manyatta and Migosi. For perspective the average reported daily abstraction per well in these areas as of 2014 is 0.76m3 and 0.81m3, respectively (see Okotto et al 2015). 

Potential contamination hazards for water in hand-dug wells. Source: Stirling Conservation Science

The other crucial factor here is sanitation. As the above diagram demonstrates there are many risks to the safety of water abstracted from hand-dug wells. One key threat, as mentioned briefly last week, is that of seepage from non-flushing toilets. Drangert et al recognise one possible solution to this in the existence of local “water communities”, groups who are coming together to develop piped networks deriving from the boreholes in their areas. These initiatives could lead to greater standards of hygiene and sanitation, although there is no guarantee that they would result in reduced source contamination. 

Water sources, hygiene and sanitation in East Africa

In this blog I want to discuss something I have mentioned only fleetingly so far, the relationship between water accessibility and the health of Africa’s urban population. Following Tumwine et al. (2002) I am going to focus on three crucial determinants of the incidence of diarrhoea in East Africa: the type of water source, the quantity of water available and the provision of sanitation facilities. 

Relationship between water source and diarrhoea prevalence. Source: Tumwine et al. (2002)

The above graph indicates the relationship between the type of water source used and the prevalence of diarrhoea — the cause of over 20% of child mortality in Kenya (see here). Surface water is the worst, and within this category static reservoirs and ponds appear to be more likely to result in sickness than springs and seeps. Vendors emerge as the safest source of water. However I think it’s important to point out, in light of Howard et al’s (2002) findings, that it is not unknown for vendors to make use of surface water supplies themselves! 

The next issue is the actual quantity of water available. As mentioned briefly in an earlier post, there is a direct relationship between the availability of water and the practices of household cleaning and personal hygiene. Tumwine et al’s analysis reveals that for each unit increase in water consumption (L/capita/day) the odds of contracting diarrhoea reduces by a factor of 0.96. This brings us back to the discussion of piped and unpiped water supplies and what they mean for domestic water availability. 

Whether household supplies are piped or unpiped also has important consequences for sanitation. The authors found that the incidence of diarrhoea was far lower in those dwellings with a latrine or other sanitation facility than in those without. This jogs my mind back to an article on flying toilets that I read last week when preparing for my blog on Kibera. If you’re interested to learn a bit more about sanitation in the continent’s largest slum then go and check it out! 

Kisumu Kenya. Source: Water Journalists Africa