Tensions in Rural Water Governance: The Elusive Functioning of Rural Water Points in Tanzania

Abstract

Public water services are still failing rural Tanzanians. Emboldened by advances in information communication technologies, the Ministry of Water has been developing computing, financial and administrative technologies to update and visualise the status of rural water points. This amalgam of technologies marks the emergence of an information infrastructure for rural water governance. The information infrastructure will enable the ministry to "see" the functionality status of all rural water points and to plan and budget for their repair and maintenance. In this paper, we examine three administrative technologies, which aim to standardise the functionality status of water points, and to prescribe how the information flows within the government hierarchy, and who is a legitimate recipient of this information. We analyze qualitative data, collected over a period of four years, in the framework of an interdisciplinary research program, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research-Science for Global Development (NWO-Wotro). In contrast to other researchers who study how information infrastructure evolves over time, we study what infrastructure evolution reveals about water governance. Our analysis of the practices of participants in rural water governance reveals tensions between formal and informal processes, which affect rural water services negatively.

Global Ambitions, Local Contexts: Alternative Ways of Knowing the World

“…In contrast, an unstable indicator over time may be used not as a basis for decision and action, but as an object of manipulation. For instance, if the definition of a functional water source changes three times within a few years, any hope of monitoring access to water over time is doomed [9].…”

“…The latest figures from the Joint Monitoring Programme show no increase in overall improved water coverage access, with deficits in rural areas almost twice those in urban areas. About 52% of the population living in rural areas-21.1 million people-still lacks access to improved water [9].…”

Geo-Information Tools, Governance, and Wicked Policy Problems

“…The authors attributed some of the errors in the database to the bracketing-out of stakeholder disagreement and the discretionary nature of water point mapping. Katomero et al [40] discuss how the bracketed-out disagreements later reappeared as three pervasive governance tensions, and moved the problem back to box 4. The first tension is between formal government standards and informal practices used by district water engineers and villagers to classify water points.…”