Paper short abstract:

Addis Ababa has a major water supply-demand gap. This paper explores how city residents manage this at household level, with particular focus on collective and cooperative responses, and the city water governance model’s role in shaping them.

Paper long abstract:

Addis Ababa is home to a wide range of types of housing, with differing challenges in securing household water. In state-built complexes such as the IHDP condominiums, supply chain issues create inadequate infrastructures of water supply and storage even before the blocks are lived in. The state anticipates residents forming local formal institutional responses to these shortfalls, but the reality is that these take time to develop – and are undermined by factors such as ethnic nationalism, unequal relations to capital, and the utility’s governance model.

Addis Ababa’s water utility’s governance approach is dominated by financial concerns, often upwardly accountable. Traditional donors, in particular, place emphasis on economic metrics, leading to disconnections, prevention of water sharing, and an intense focus on commercial NRW.

The city’s poorest residents often act individually in securing water, whereas those who, for example, own fixed assets are more able to depend on social networks across time and space. In wealthy private real estate complexes, formal institutions develop with such effectiveness that they sometimes manage off-grid private piped water networks, independently of the city utility.

Despite these structural challenges, informal institutions arise and evolve between neighbours, family members, and colleagues – the most effective way in which water is secured on a day-to-day basis. Based on extensive qualitative empirical research, this paper explores the ways in which water users across distinct socioeconomic settings manage water supply in the face of substantial water rationing and unpredictability, with particular focus on collective, cooperative responses by communities.