Hydro Nation Scholars Programme: Full PhD scholarship Opportunity

Background
In Dar es Salaam, the
largest city of Tanzania, water access has been described as “unjust,
inequitable and uneven,” with a combination of electricity outages and
overall water shortage affecting supply (Smiley 2016, p.1320). The
population of the city is expected to reach around 5 million by 2020 but
around 30% of the population do not have access to safe and clean
drinking water (NBS 2014). Social accountability interventions (SAIs)
typically promote transparency in the interests of empowering citizens
to challenge specific malpractices or injustices, support community
initiatives and create opportunities for participatory governance
involving various forms of consultation (Hickey and King 2014).

This proposal brings together a team of supervisors at University of
Glasgow and University of Dar es Salaam, who have been engaged in
research on social accountability and the water sector in DAC-list
countries. In 2018, the team conducted a pilot project, the central
element of which was a baseline survey on access to water and social
accountability in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro, Tanzania (N 2069,
fieldwork March 2018, funded by Scottish Funding Council grant
SFC/AN/12/2017). The project built a partnership with two NGOs active in
the water sector in Tanzania, Water Witness International (WWI), based
in Edinburgh, and their local partner, Shahidi wa Maji (SwM). WWI and
SwM have been funded by the Hewlett Foundation (HF) to advance social
accountability and advocacy practice for a fair water future. As part of
this work, they plan to conduct SAIs in Dar es Salaam in the period
April 2020-March 2021. The SAIs involve holding community meetings and
assisting residents to engage with water providers and regulatory
authorities in defence of their statutory rights. This is done with the
help of a “Water Witness” recruited from the community–typically a
concerned or affected individual, or a representative of the local water
committee.

Aims/Objectives
The aim of this project is
to understand what role social accountability interventions (SAIs) can
play in improving the responsiveness of local regulatory authorities to
the need for clean and accessible water, specifically by stimulating
engagement by citizens. The objectives are:
1) using the data from
the baseline survey already conducted in Dar es Salaam, to identify the
social, economic and political factors which facilitate engagement with
regulatory authorities and providers in defence of rights to clean
water.
2) to use evaluation methodologies (theory of change
analysis) to conduct a post-hoc evaluation of the effectiveness of SAIs
conducted by WWI and SwM.
3) to triangulate findings from the
baseline survey and evaluation study to produce recommendations on how
SAIs in the water sector can be made more effective.