Silence and Voice in Nigeria's Hybrid Urban Water Markets: Implications for Local Governance of Public Goods

Abstract

This article highlights how the governance of the water sector affects the strategies and tactics urban residents use to gain improved access to water for household consumption in cities with limited networked infrastructure. A framework of exit, voice and loyalty (EVL) is used to characterize the actions household decision makers take in neighborhoods across metropolitan areas. In Nigeria, Lagos and Benin City are rapidly growing metropolitan regions with urban water markets competing with a state‐run utility. Scholars have documented informality and hybridity between state and non‐state actors, but there is less understanding of variables associated with citizen behavior in urban water markets across different types of households and communities. This article places Nigeria in the context of African mobilization around water provision, using interviews, observation and findings from fieldwork, household interviews and surveys undertaken between 2008 and 2015 to show how access to water is shaped by the interplay between state and non‐state sources of water. This access is filtered through differently regulated service providers and the perceived authority of each actor involved in water delivery, which can lead to what I call structural silence. Findings show the need for a grounded understanding of factors influencing voice and participation in local governance.

Unpacking everyday urbanism: Practices and the making of (un)even urban waterscapes

“…These social infrastructures, grounded on different institutions of voluntary collaborations, kinship, and loyalties, serve to “navigate the city” and sustain the precarious urban life of low‐income dwellers (McFarlane & Silver, 2017, p. 1). In Lagos, for instance, the frustration arising from everyday interactions with the government and the fragmented and unevenly distributed infrastructures materializes on the one hand in “passive acceptance without consent”, and on the other in forms of solidarity of borehole owners that provide water to their immediate neighbors free of charge (Acey, 2019, p. 17). Similar practices of water gifting between neighbors have been mapped by Zug and Graefe (2014) in their study of an area of Khartoum patchily supplied by the water utility.…”

History and Prospects for African Land Governance: Institutions, Technology and ‘Land Rights for All’

“…In the Kalingalinga poor neighbourhood of Lusaka, Zambia, an exhibition of work by local photographers and visual artists which toured internationally, helped to empower the community [146][147][148]. Citizen frustration with basic infrastructure shortages of water, electricity and sanitation pushes them to learn tactics to negotiate improvements [149][150][151][152][153]. Networks of local community actors, for instance, are recycling waste materials into energy briquettes, as alternative cooking energy solutions using locally available technologies [154][155][156].…”

Global retail capital and urban futures: Feminist postcolonial perspectives

“…African and Afrodescendent scholars examine a host of urban issues, including work on urban industrialization, resource access, sustainable development, “green urbanism”, and transportation fixes (e.g., Acey, 2018; Cobbinah, Erdiaw‐Kwasie, & Amoateng, 2015; Johnston‐Anumonwo & Doane, 2011; Ikioda, 2013; Oberhauser & Johnston‐Anumonwo, 2014; Oberhauser & Yeboah, 2011). Postcolonial scholars here link these contemporary urban issues to colonial pasts (Kamete, 2013; Njoh, 2008; Omolo‐Okalebo et al, 2010; Usuanlele & Oduntan, 2018).…”

“…Here, African feminist work also provides fresh perspectives on agency and resistance vis a vis the state, development, and other agencies that powerfully structure urban African life (Attia & Khalil, 2015; Kinyanjui, 2019). One example is Acey's (2018) work on urban water management and resource access in Lagos and Benin City, Nigeria. In the hybridized public and private provision‐settings of these two cities she examines the strategies women “change agents” use to access water, and their challenges (2016a, 2016b).…”

“…Following Utu‐feminism, it confronts colonial‐neocolonial capitalism via women's lived reality. Most basically, it reminds us of women's centrality in urban space making, and in everyday moves of urban resistance (Acey, 2018; Adenyi‐Ogunyankin, 2019a, 2019b; Kinyanjui, 2014). Epistemologically, this approach values “fire‐side knowledges” and other feminist Afrofuturist knowledge making around urban life.…”