The changing nature of water and land in the formalization process of unplanned settlements in Khartoum, Sudan

Water supply and water distribution are becoming increasingly problematic in many large cities in developing countries, especially those located in arid and semi-arid areas. Khartoum is experiencing a very fast population growth in combination with a rapid expansion of the urban area. In the past decades this growth led to the emergence of unplanned settlements, with very limited government activities in regard to planning, management, security and services. These unplanned settlements are either informally occupied areas or old camps for internally displaced people. Both types exclusively host the urban poor and are now undergoing a process of formalization mainly through removal of the existing structures and local redistribution of land or resettlement of the present population within Khartoum, under provision of formal land titles.

The research focuses on land and water, which are both very special from most other physical objects dealt with in everyday life. Both are human necessities. Everybody needs H2O and some ground to stand, sit, sleep and walk on. Land and water – according to these basic definitions – are only substitutable by other land or water. For both it is highly disputable in which form they should be managed which is a result of their special nature, leading to very different systems of management even within capitalist systems.   

Scientific research is a reflection of the policy dialogues on urban water management in developing countries. Since several decades the focus is on the global/national/city level, discussing the objectives of water provision, which are depending on the normative views of different actors, and lead to policies somewhere in-between cost recovery, profit, expansion of networks, ensuring basic needs, supplying the urban poor and improving the health situation. The central question is which arrangement of actors is most able to achieve these conflicting normative and continuously changing objectives. Following the neoliberal mainstream, dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, many governments privatized water management in the 1990s as a reaction to weak performance of the public sector in the preceding decade. Privatization did, however, not bring the expected breakthrough in water management and led to the realization of private firms that serving the poor under the restriction of cost recovery is only possible with government subsidies. The discussion about what arrangement should come next is presently starting.     

The interest of this research is set on a lower scale of analysis than the dominating water discourse which could be defined as the city/neighbourhood/household level. In the settlements of the urban poor the waterscape is very manifold, comprising of few formal sector pipes but to a large extent of small informal water suppliers like the donkey carts providing water to large parts of Khartoum’s urban population. These enterprises belong to “the other” private sector in contrast to the multinational companies which most have in the mind with the private sector when talking about water management. However, some motivations of these two private actors are quite similar. The companies’ quest for cost recovery and profit is reflected in the donkey kart operators’ need to generate enough money to cover the costs and to make a living. Water in both cases is dealt with as a commodity. But in the same time, even in the same locality, water can also have a completely different nature. Water can be non-commodified, even for free, obtained from NGO built hand pumps, or actors who provide water because of humanitarian or religious motivations.

The objective of the research is to analyse the nature of water and land on a local level taking the multiplicity of actors into account. Through formalization the customary land system will be replaced by bureaucratic government system, having huge impact on the nature of land, but also indirectly on many other aspects of people’s lives. Being a formal settlement will allow them claiming services from the government and it will change the legal basis for private investments. The trigger formalization will allow observing huge changes in the land system and the waterscape. This situation of change will allow reflecting on concepts which are in the core of the macro level privatization debate like commercialization, commodification, public versus private or economic goods, water as a natural monopoly versus exposed to market forces.

The analysis on this local level can neither be done detached from the macro level nor is it irrelevant for it. The local level is an integral part of the waterscape. It is these from the formal sector un-served people with their perceptions on water, who are intended to be covered in future by formal systems. Privatization also failed, because people were not willing to pay the amount assumed by the multinationals to be possible for them to pay, hence, also because of shortcomings in the analysis of the potential consumers. The failure of water provision through the public sector and the multinationals will make informal water supply systems a persisting reality in developing countries, demanding for an increase of scientific research.  

The research is imbedded into the Water Management Khartoum International Research Project (WAMAKHAIR), in which Sudanese, French, German and Swiss scholars cooperate to comprehensively understand several dimensions of water management in the Sudanese capital.           

                      
                       free water carried home from a chicken farm 

 

informal commercial water provision through informal donkey karts

 

Contacts

Research Partner

Prof. Dr. Elsamawal Khalil Makki
Assistant Professor
School of Rural Extension, Education and Development
Ahfad University for Women
P.O. Box 167 Omdurman
Postal code 14411
Sudan
E-mail: sammakki@hotmail.com

 

Supervision

Prof. Dr. Olivier Graefe, University of Fribourg

PhD Candidate

Sebastian Zug
Department of Geosciences
Geography Unit
University of Fribourg
4, chemin du Musée
1700 Fribourg
Switzerland
e-mail: Sebastian.Zug@unifr.ch

www.unifr.ch/geoscience/geographie/zug