Beyond the networked city: building innovative delivery systems for water, sanitation and energy in urban Africa

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Our research will develop and test improved systems to deliver water, sanitation and energy services to marginalised people living in urban areas. These services are selected because they represent the most fundamental needs of urban populations and are the focus of SDG 6 (water and sanitation) and SDG 7 (energy). Our work will support the achievement of SDG 11 (sustainable communities and cities).The research will be undertaken in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Kampala, Uganda. The population in both these cities is growing rapidly, with significant levels of poverty and significant numbers of informal settlements. Current rates of access to water supply, sanitation and energy are low in these cities, with striking inequalities in access to these services between wealthy and poor areas. The rapid increase in population has led to communities being established that are distant from existing infrastructure and difficult to serve. Households in marginalised communities therefore have to access water, sanitation and energy from informal and often 'off-grid' sources. This includes, for instance, using charcoal for energy, dug wells or protected springs for domestic water and basic on-site sanitation. Our research will combine social, economic and political analysis with insights from natural and engineering science to understand how the infrastructure, management, finance and governance can be developed to improve water, sanitation and energy services. Our research is designed in five inter-related work areas. We will first establish a thorough understanding of each city. We will analyse how the cities have developed to date and how they are likely to develop in the future; we will identify which areas have access to formal services and which have access to informal services; and will we map the hazards and risks in each city. We will use data collected from official statistics to analyse each city and in Freetown we will use remotely sensed data from NASA to map the city. We will then assess the formal on-grid services, using data key attributes of the infrastructure to develop risk maps. We will research the attitudes of suppliers, policy makers and city officials regarding the challenges and opportunities to extend services to people who don't currently have access. We will complement this by looking at how informal suppliers provide services, including the technologies they use and their business models. We will assess the resilience of the services and research the perceptions of the informal suppliers about how services can be improved and what they see as being their role in this. Next we will work in four marginalised communities to understand how and from where they currently access services, how much they pay and their perception of the quality of services. We will explore what people living communities think would be the best way to improve services and who they think should provide services. We will use all the data we have collected about the city, from suppliers of services and from communities to develop a set of options for improving services to marginalised communities. This will use a 'Delphi' method that uses discussions to build consensus on which are the best options. We will involve policy makers, service providers and members of marginalised communities to develop the preferred options. The final part of our research will be to test specific interventions in four communities. We will undertake a formal outcome evaluation to assess how well these options work and undertake a value for money assessment of each option. We will also develop city-wide plans for the development of services over time. Throughout our research we will engage with local people, decision-makers and funders to ensure that our research addresses the questions they think are most important and to maximise the potential for our research to influence service development in each city.