Water Infrastructure in a small west African city: Situating sharing and volunteering in the making of urban infrastructures

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 132; pp. 135 - 144
• Main Author: Neves Alves, Susana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2022; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: African cities; Careers; Donors; Governance; Infrastructure; Neighborhoods; Networking; Small cities; Social infrastructures; Social relations; Urban infrastructure; Volunteers; Water; Water circulation; Water regimes; Water sharing; Water supply; Water supply systems; Water utilities; Urban infrastructure; Water; Social infrastructures; Water sharing; Small cities; African cities
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.04.009

•Variety of infrastructural configurations emerging in small cities in Africa.•Focus on everyday practices to conceptualise water infrastructure.•Water sharing as everyday practice and political terrain.•Volunteering/ relentless unpaid labour in infrastructure making as social infrastructure.•Standard water meters: contestations and shifting social relations in small cities. This paper explores water sharing and volunteering as lenses to investigate the social relations, visions and aspirations moving water in Bafatá, a small city in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Water sharing is a prevalent practice in Bafatá, and one in which most of the city’s residents are implicated as either, or often both donors and receivers. Simultaneously, the relentless work involved in operating the city’s piped water supply is carried out by a large pool of volunteers or very low and irregularly paid labourers, who often live in neighbourhoods that are not even served by this water system. This article argues that water sharing constitutes an essential practice facilitating the circulation of water and infrastructure making in this city as well as a political act through which people support and resist particular water regimes. It also highlights how volunteers for the water utility sustain a social infrastructure that facilitates not only the circulation of water but also career, training, income and networking opportunities. In this way, this paper contributes to debates concerning the variety of infrastructural and urban governance configurations emerging in small cities, and the forces shaping service delivery in these urban centres. It also raises questions concerning the value of international development investments in water supply and the multiple unexpected possibilities emerging from these.