Collaborative Water Governance and Social Equity: A Sub-Saharan Perspective

Abstract

Access to water and sanitation services is a global crisis, however, it is more prominent in poor and disadvantaged communities, especially in developing countries. This paper adopts a qualitative discourse analysis approach to examine collaborative water governance in African countries (Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe). A discourse analysis approach was adopted as it is useful in examining and analysing written content by considering the context of the study. Therefore, since the study is qualitative in nature, a series of journal articles, reports and newspapers were chosen as key data sources. The chapter examines the collaborative and participatory approaches in enhancing equality towards access to water and sanitation services in indigenous communities in selected African countries. It further discusses the role of water governance systems and their different dimensions in shaping different outcomes towards access to water. The study is explored under the theoretical constructs of the theory of social equity, organisational justice and targeted universalism. The study established that, water collaborative governance approaches did not consider the unique nature of indigenous 
communities (values, culture and knowledge) which bears greatly upon how they perceive water resources. Therefore, collaborative approaches did not enhance equity towards access, hence this study recommends governments to incorporate indigenous knowledge systems in water governance.