Halfway Reflections: Decolonising The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Sector

Figure 1: An image symbolising the WASH sector.

Source: Jadwiga Figula (2021).

Reflecting on my posts so far, I have drawn on water-related issues to strengthen the rhetoric that women should be more involved in governmental processes from the local to the international level, to heed socio-economic development in Southern Africa. In future posts, I hope to push this analysis further by investigating The National Water Act and exploring the key gendered issue of WASH.

Yet first, I would like to pause and reflect on my positionality as a white geographer writing in an African context, unconsciously responsible for legacies of colonialism and oppression inflicted by my ancestors. To not perpetuate the idea of a ‘white saviour’, expressing developmental solutions in a field historically saturated with white, male thought, this post aligns with the decolonisation movement, inspired by BAME, female voices from an IRC Global Talk. 


‘While the physical colonisation of the countries of the global South by the countries of the global North may have ended, knowledge colonialism continues’ ~ Bruce Boyes

Decolonising the WASH sector is framed within the wider debate of decolonising knowledge. To understand Western epistemological dominance, I will firstly define epistemology as being intrinsically linked to one’s worldview, in that individuals are always situated in a belief system where their ability to reason and validate is informed by who their socio-cultural positionality and the beliefs they hold. Historically, European colonisers imposed their language, interests, religion and worldview within the Global South, destructing or deliberately undervaluing indigenous culture. 

This, amplified by the dominance of English language within published research encouraged a depreciation of Southern knowledge in development discourse and a distinct disconnection between theory and the realities of people on the ground.

Regarding water and development, Euphresia highlights from 2018-2019 in Kenya, non-revenue water levels, referring to water which is lost before it reaches the consumer, increased in line with rising donor funding. In theory, this relationship should be inverted, considering how increased investment should improve water servicing infrastructure. 

Figure 2: A graph to show non-revenue water level increases over time in Kenya, titled 'The colonised African WASH sector' by IRC.

Source: WASREB (2020) and IRC (2020).

The issue is threaded with epistemological colonial legacies, considering how Northerners [1] design and parachute in to implement new products, divorced from the social context in which they are embedded, to fit their own predetermined agendas. This incompatibility with local expertise and cultural norms contributes to a project’s failure or its inability to be maintained, forming a vicious cycle of monetary loss and steepening social inequality when it is consequently replaced.

To break this trend, what counts as good sanitation knowledge must be redefined. This means decolonising Institutional WASH knowledge Agenda Setting regarding who sets priorities, who gets to sit and the table and whose voices are heard. Thereby, including indigenous and female knowledge to help dismantle the white, masculinist imbalances within knowledge production. This directly links to previous posts, emphasising the advantages of and obstacles to female led governance, whilst re-framing the importance of redistributing power relations through a decolonial lens.

This is not to reject Northerners outright, as they can bring technical expertise and funding to the developmental field, but rather, to not position them front and centre when addressing said issues. Nor is blame the motive for this post, as explained below:-


‘The problem isn’t men, it’s patriarchy. .. Recognize systems of oppression before letting individual defensiveness paralyze you from dismantling them.’ ~ Ruchika Tulshyan 


Going forward, I will utilise this post and Euphresia's example of Kenya to better understand the colonial legacies embedded within sanitation projects in Southern Africa. I will be more conscious of how these have contributed to knowledge oppression in the developmental field, drawing on scholars writing in their own context in my upcoming posts, to help rewrite the narrative of WASH.

[1] I acknowledge ‘Northern[ers]’ and ‘Southern[ers]’ are imperfect terms, however it is how Euphresia distinguished them.