No abstract

Studies of infrastructure have demonstrated broad differences between Northern and Southern cities, and deconstructed urban theory derived from experiences of the networked urban regions of the Global North. This includes critiques of the universalisation of the historically–culturally produced normative ideal of universal, uniform infrastructure. In this commentary, we first introduce the notion of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’ (HICs) which resonates with existing scholarship on Southern urbanism. Second, we argue that thinking through HICs helps us to move beyond technological and performative accounts of actually existing infrastructures to provide an analytical lens through which to compare different configurations. Our approach enables a clearer analysis of infrastructural artefacts not as individual objects but as parts of geographically spread socio-technological configurations: configurations which might involve many different kinds of technologies, relations, capacities and operations, entailing different risks and power relationships. We use examples from ongoing research on sanitation and waste in Kampala, Uganda – a city in which service delivery is characterised by multiplicity, overlap, disruption and inequality – to demonstrate the kinds of research questions that emerge when thinking through the notion of HICs.

A B S T R AC T This paper describes the evolution of the piped water and sewer system in Kampala, Uganda, between 1920 and 1950, and considers the influences this had on the city's later development. Large-scale systems for water and sanitation are associated with an inertia that makes them slow to adapt to a new economic, social or environmental context. It is important to know the history of such systems in order to understand issues of sustainability today. This article shows how the piped water and sewerage systems were introduced to serve mainly the more affluent groups in society. Although the systems were economically and socially sustainable in the colonial context, inherent features of the systems made universal service coverage problematic from an economic point of view. Policy makers need to acknowledge the historic influence and the inertia of systems in order to address current shortcomings in water and sanitation provision, and create sustainable and equitable service provision.

In contrast to the European historical experience, Africa’s urban infrastructural systems are characterised by stagnation long before demand has been saturated. Water infrastructures have been stabilised as systems predominantly providing services for elites, with millions of poor people lacking basic services in the cities. What is puzzling is that so little emphasis has been placed on innovation and the adaptation of the colonial technological paradigm to better suit the local and current socio-economic contexts. Based on historical case studies of Kampala and Nairobi, this paper argues that the lack of innovation in African urban water infrastructure can be understood using Pinch and Bijker’s concept of technological closure, and by looking at water technology from its embedded values and ideology. Large-scale water technology became part of African leaders’ strategies to build prosperous nations and cities after decolonisation and the ideological purpose of infrastructure may have been much more important than previously understood. Water technology had reached a state of closure in Europe and then came to represent modernisation and progress in the colonial context. It has continued to serve such a similar symbolic purpose after independence, with old norms essentially being preserved. Recent sector reforms have defined problems predominantly as of economic and institutional nature while state actors have become ‘unseeing’ vis-á-vis controversies within the technological systems themselves. In order to induce socio-technical innovation towards equality in urban infrastructure services, it will be necessary to understand the broader incentive structure that governs the relevant social groups, such as governments, donors, water suppliers and the consumers, as well as power-structures and political accountability.

The episodic outbreak of COVID-19 due to SARS-CoV-2 is severely affecting the economy, and the global count of infected patients is increasing. The actual number of patients had been underestimated due to limited facilities for testing as well as asymptomatic nature of the expression of COVID-19 on individual basis. Tragically, for emerging economies with high population density, the situation has been more complex due to insufficient testing facilities for diagnosis of the disease. However, the recent reports about persistent shedding of viral RNA of SARS-CoV-2 in the human feces have created a possibility to track the prevalence and trends of the disease in communities, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). In this article, we highlight the current limitations and future prospects for WBE to manage pandemics.