Access to Water in a Nairobi Slum: Women's Work and Institutional Learning

Citation:

Crow, Ben, and Edmond Odaba. 2010. “Access to Water in a Nairobi Slum: Women’s Work and Institutional Learning.” Water International 35 (6): 733–47. 

Authors: Ben Crow, Edmond Odaba

Abstract:

This paper describes the ways that households, and particularly women, experience water scarcity in a large informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, through heavy expenditures of time and money, considerable investments in water storage and routinized sequences of deferred household tasks. It then delineates three phases of adaptive water and social engineering undertaken in several informal settlements by the Nairobi Water Company in an ongoing attempt to construct effective municipal institutions and infrastructure to improve residential access to water and loosen the grip that informal vendors may have on the market for water in these localities.

Keywords: slums, water supply, water markets, institutions, deliberative democracy, household water storage, Kenya, Gender

Topics: Environment, Gender, Women, Governance, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2010