Abstract
The water supply challenge, though a global issue, is more pronounced in urban informal settlement areas, which are characterized by high economic and social activity; and is exacerbated by rapid population growth, increasingly water-intensive growth patterns, pollution, rainfall variability, and other anthropogenic factors. In many urban informal settlement areas, the panacea to this challenge has been the implementation of water supply projects, many of which fail within the first two years of the inauguration, with corresponding non-functionality rates of thirty to sixty percent at any given time. Due to the tenure constraints and other infrastructural and spatial challenges, these water supply projects tend to be shared among the residents. Recalling that the management of resources in traditional African societies was structured around communal perspectives, this chapter sought to surface the key tenets of traditional resource management systems and explore how they can be applied in urban informal settlement space. The discussion centres around the aspects of leadership through mutualities; focusing on community needs; and community management as opposed to community participation, as crucial elements to incorporate in the management of water supply projects in today’s urban informal contexts.
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The authors would like to thank DAAD and the Exceed Swindon project at TU Braunschweig for supporting this work.
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Gichohi, W.R. (2022). From Huts to Shacks: Drawing Lessons from Traditional Resource Management Systems to Inform the Management of Communal Water Projects in Urban Informal Settlements in Kenya. In: Kowenje, C., et al. From Traditional to Modern African Water Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09663-1_15
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