Water and Development: Good Governance after Neoliberalism

Water has always been a crucial catalyst for human development. In Africa, competition among different sectors for this scarce resource remains a critcial challenge to water managers and decision-makers. Water and Development examines a range of issues, from governance to solar distillation, from gender to water pumps, using a range of research methods, from participant observation to GIS and SPSS data analysis. Throughout, however, there is the unifying thread of developing a participatory and sustainable approach to water which recognises it as an essential public necessity. Edited by Ronaldo Munck, Narathius Asingwire, Honor Fagan and Consolata Kabonesa, the result is essential reading both for students of development and the environment and for NGOs and policy-makers seeking a robust and transformational approach to water and development

Women’s access to safe water and participation in community management of supply

Poverty is rife in Uganda in both urban and rural communities. This chapter outlines the situation for poor women securing water for their households in a rural village. It gives an account of poor women’s ‘fluid lives’ as they engage in efforts to secure water for their households and participate in water governance at community level where there are persistent water-related problems. The authors conducted a socio-economic study of households in a poor rural parish in order to better understand women’s safe water access and participation in the management of a healthy community water supply. The study findings confirm that gender remains an important analytical tool for identifying access issues, since gender relations and inequalities are evident in most of the mechanisms of access to water in this community. The chapter explores how women and children remain vulnerable to lack of access to safe water, even where there are community schemes and improved water sources in place, since for the most part powerful, formal positions such as village chairperson, water user committee member, and handpump mechanic continue to be held by men. This is despite the fact that, in the case of water user committees in particular, the 1999 National Water Policy stipulates that women should make up 50 per cent of such committees. In addition, payment arrangements, particularly maintenance and repair fees, frequently result in denying vulnerable children and women physical access to water resources whenever men, as household heads, do not pay these fees. Strategies which seek to improve women’s access to safe water and power in community organization of water remain essential

Water and Development: Good Governance after Neoliberalism

Water has always been a crucial catalyst for human development. In Africa, competition among different sectors for this scarce resource remains a critcial challenge to water managers and decision-makers. Water and Development examines a range of issues, from governance to solar distillation, from gender to water pumps, using a range of research methods, from participant observation to GIS and SPSS data analysis. Throughout, however, there is the unifying thread of developing a participatory and sustainable approach to water which recognises it as an essential public necessity. Edited by Ronaldo Munck, Narathius Asingwire, Honor Fagan and Consolata Kabonesa, the result is essential reading both for students of development and the environment and for NGOs and policy-makers seeking a robust and transformational approach to water and development

Beyond Distance and Time: Gender and the Burden of Water Collection in Rural Uganda

This paper explores the gender differences in water collection in Makondo Parish in Uganda as a case study. Our analysis is based on data col­lected from a cross-sectional survey, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation in the study area. This data confirms that children and women are most burdened by water collection. Unless it is for commercial or work-related reasons or when there is a long drought, men rarely fetch water. Our study further reveals that children and women walk distances of less than half a kilometre to more than two kilometres on rugged and hilly roads and paths, carrying water on their heads or by hand. They spend a lot of time queu­ing at improved water sources, and suffer from health complications such as prolonged fatigue, chest pain and headache as a result of carrying water. Chil­dren and women are also distressed by the dangers of verbal and physical assault and rape at both improved and unimproved water points. We con­tend that whereas time and distance remain important determinants of the burden of water collection, socio-cultural, environmental and health-related conditions are equally critical in understanding the troubles that children and women face while collecting water in rural developing communities

A Gender Perspective of the Status of Water and Sanitation Landscape in East African Universities.

Access and utilization of adequate water supply and sanitation facilities is high on the agenda of both International national and local communities including East African Universities EAUs Despite global demand for higher education characterized with increased male and female enrolment the current levels of access and utilization to water supply and sanitation facilities remain largely inadequate and gendered in EAUs Among the contributing factors is limited gender scholarship to question the causes of gender inequalities in access and utilization of water and sanitation facilities in universities including selected EAUs This paper aims to explore the gender responsiveness of access and utilization of water and sanitation facilities and to ascertain the underlying gendered causes of the current status of water and sanitation facilities in EAUs The paper adopted crosssectional gender focused study design A total of 701 respondents were interviewed at both Makerere and Dar es salaam Universities Qualitative gender disaggregated data was collected using semi-structured and in-depth interviews focus group discussions and follow up site visits for observations Water and sanitation facilities were georeferenced and analysed using geo-statistics techniques and Euclidian distance in ArcGIS 10 1 Gender concerns were captured both in access and utilization modeling gender related criteria in the reclassification of the number of toilet per person Strong evidence indicates that EAUs are gendered and exhibit severe deficiencies in water and sanitation facilities Major contributing factors of the observed deficiencies in water and sanitation facilities were lack of gender focused research rapid increment of student enrollment lack of water and sanitation policies and prioritization decline in government support associated with liberalization and expansion of universities among others Based on these findings there is need to improve and engender the curren

A Socio-Spatial Survey of Water Issues in Makondo Parish, Uganda

This report details some of the key findings of a sociological survey that was undertaken in rural Makondo Parish, Lwengo District in Uganda. The cross-sectional survey was carried out between September and November 2011 and covered all the 15 villages in the Parish. The broad aim of the survey was to assess the livelihoods, health, gender and water governance issues in Makondo Parish. Prior to the survey, several preliminary visits were made to the study area, which were then followed by a rigorous literature review on rural water governance, health and livelihoods in Uganda and globally so as to identify the major themes and variables. These themes were then used to develop a quantitative or structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was structured under the following headings: household and interviewer identification; respondents’ characteristics; household livelihoods and well-being, particularly poverty indicators like main source of income, money earned, dwelling type, and number of meals eaten; knowledge of the importance of safe water; access to safe water, such as type of water sources used, access to improved water sources, transportation of water; health issues like water-related diseases suffered, cost to the household of these diseases, steps taken to mitigate against the diseases; knowledge of hand-pump functionality; household water use and management, such as satisfaction with use, conflicts if any and decision-making on use; perceptions of safe water services and systems such as rating of safe water service delivery and why; knowledge of community-based water management systems and capacity building for sustainable utilisation of safe water. The final version was translated into Luganda, the local vernacular so as not to distort the meaning of the questions. This exercise was carried out by the Makerere University Institute of Languages, and the Luganda version was then used to train the Community Health Workers on how to administer and record standardised interviews, such as mastering the intended meaning of each and every question in the questionnaire, the expected data, recording and editing among others. The CHWs were also trained on how to use a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit so as to capture the necessary data for mapping the household locations. After training the CHWs, the questionnaire was piloted in one of the villages in a neighbouring Parish (called Nanywa) and again revised. The actual field work or data collection started with Misaana village in the North-Eastern part of Makondo Parish, then moved on to Luyiiyi-Kate, Luyiiyi-Protazio and ended with Kiguluka, the last village in the Parish on 14th November 2011. It took between three to four days on average to complete the survey in each village, and the first day of work in each village involved meeting the Village Chairpersons, explaining to then about the WIL Project, objectives of the survey and seeking their support in locating selected households for interviews. After every two-three days of data collection, meetings were held with the interviewers/CHWs to share fieldwork experiences as well as edit field questionnaires. A total of six hundred and six (606) households selected proportionately across the 15 villages in Makondo Parish were covered in the survey. Despite several challenges that were met during the survey, such as failure by interviewers/CHWs to complete their assigned households in time; heavy rains that made driving on the village roads quite difficult especially in Kiteredde, Kiyumbakimu and Kiguluka villages, the survey was a success and data collection ended quite successfully, as the originally targeted sample was attained

HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Perceptions and Responses of Individuals Regarding HIV Infection and Prevention in Rural Uganda

153 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998.The study suggests that a combination of social learning programs and those which impart self-efficacy skills would increase condom use and possibly decrease new HIV infection cases.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

LANGUAGE VARIANCES IN DEFINING YOUNG WOMEN IN NORTHERN UGANDA HUMANITARIAN SETTINGS

This paper, which focuses on formerly displaced communities in post-conflict northern Uganda, discusses the variance between the way formal institutions view young women’s identities and how young women see themselves. Based on a qualitative study that used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, findings indicate that the infantilizing and victimizing language adopted by these institutions does not reflect the identities of young women in the post-conflict setting. These women argue that terminology such as “child mother” and “child soldier” is disempowering, denying them the prestige of adulthood yet disassociating them from childhood. The intersecting nature of their perceived identities hinders their access to humanitarian assistance targeted specifically to children or adults, since they are not recognized as clearly belonging to either group. The use of the term “child mother” effectively penalizes young women for engaging in adult (sexual) behaviour, while denying them the adult status that mothers are normally accorded. This article argues that sustainable post-conflict reconstruction, with efficient access to and use of humanitarian assistance, demands insitutional adoption of contextually inclusive language that recognizes young women’s professed identities and is reflective of local experiences and realities