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Paper short abstract:

Using participatory research, we analysed the health and socioeconomic facing residents in Dar’s informal settlements. Grassroots data-collection and multisectoral, co-produced initiatives may help to counteract the drivers of ill-health and support urban climate resilience.

Paper long abstract:

In African informal settlements, residents often confront a range of health burdens linked to low-quality shelter and minimal infrastructure, with such challenges only exacerbated by climate change. Based on a recent participatory action-research partnership in Dar es Salaam, we explored the interrelations between multiple health and socio-economic risks facing residents in informal settlements. We also utilised dialogues between municipal officials, the Tanzanian slum-dweller federation, and other local stakeholders, who together explored multi-sectoral opportunities for promoting health and resilience in informal settlements.

Our findings centred upon the interrelated ‘everyday’ risks due to floods, minimal sanitation, and inadequate solid waste management in Dar’s informal settlements. We explain how these everyday risks can markedly affect health, livelihoods, and dignity in informal settlements, while also heightening social and environmental injustices. By using visual and participatory methods to explore these risks, we created a novel, grassroots-led analysis of interrelated challenges in informal settlements. Lacking an appreciation of communities’ lived experiences, government officials may readily overlook these chronic, often invisible set of health and socioeconomic challenges. But we argue that participatory tools can illuminate the major burdens stemming from everyday risks, while state-citizen engagements and multisectoral initiatives may help to counteract the political drivers of exclusionary, fragmented urban development. In closing, we offer recommendations for further action-research and holistic interventions that can foster urban health equity and resilience to multiple risks in African informal settlements.