Water Vending

Lately I have been reading about water provision in urban slums in an attempt to better understand how residents deal with lacking water infrastructure and what further consequences this lack might have. Using the case study of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I want to explore the adaptive capacity of private or commercial water vending.  

Dar es Salaam is the biggest city in Tanzania. In 2012 the population was estimated at 4 million, of which 70% are believed to live in informal settlements (BBC 2012). The parastatal organisation Dar es Salaam Water and Sewage Authority (DAWASA) is responsible for the city’s piped water system. Rapid urban growth coupled with diminishing economic resources and a lack of urban planning has resulted in inadequate basic infrastructures. Glöckner et al.(2004) suggest that less than half of the households in Dar es Salaam have direct access to the utilities provided by DAWASA. This leaves the bulk of the population in search for alternative water sources.

As mentioned in a previous post the specific characteristics that define the urban have an important influence on the available alternative ways of accessing water. Compared to rural areas, urban dwellers have less access to unprotected (and often free) sources of water. Instead illegal tapping, local community-scale initiatives and private sources become increasingly important.

In a journal article from 2000, Kjellen explores small-scale water vending in Dar es Salaam. She explicitly focuses on vendors who sell water in jerry cans and distribute it using pushcarts. She finds that private water vending is both a source of employment for primarily young men, but also that it provides basic water services to “a significant number of households” (Kjellen2000:146).  Most of the water distributed by vendors was tapped from public utilities and thus works as a substitute for the lacking pipe system. Kjellen (2000) finds that water prices are determined particularly by how difficult the distribution is – so how complicated it is for the vendor to get to the household. Depending on location, different households will pay different prices for water.

Although prices will vary it is overall much more expensive to buy water from vendors (Glöckner et al. 2004). This means that households that are already excluded from the very basic infrastructural services are further disadvantaged. In the long run it is much cheaper for a household to be connected to the piped utilities, but the up-front investment when building this connection excludes a majority of households that are not able to make such savings. As a result un-served households rely on higher price alternatives, which decreases the amount of water a household can afford to buy, and in turn creates an obstacle for good hygiene practices (Whittington et al.1989). In addition to the disadvantaged price, Kjellen (2000) also argues that the private vendors are inferior in terms of water quality. The risk of contamination is arguably greater with private vendors, as the water is poured into different containers during distribution. Each time water is poured into a new container the risk of contamination increases.

Despite the different disadvantages of commercial vending, it is still considered an interim solution to the lacking infrastructures in Dar es Salaam. Developing the piped system does not seem like an immediate possibility. Instead Kjellen(2000) suggests that making other smaller infrastructural improvements might better the situation for households and vendors. If access to households is improved, for instance with better roads or paths, then distribution will ease and prices fall. Consequently, it is thought that more water can be distributed, perhaps enabling better hygiene practices.