Comparing colonial water provision in British and French Africa

Abstract

Water is a notoriously slippery commodity in contemporary African cities, prone to governance shifts, price fluctuations, and unequal and intermittent accessibility. Many of these present-day problems have significant historical components. The colonial experiences that created urban water systems varied considerably across the African continent, with important differences between British and French cities. This paper compares colonial urban planning and water provision in British East Africa's Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and French West Africa's Dakar and Niamey. In spite of differences in colonial urban planning ideology, we see striking similarities in the urban waterscapes of these four cities. Both the British and the French colonial governments emphasized shared public standpipes as the preferred water delivery method for African neighborhoods, though the level of provision was quite different. European neighborhoods received household water taps in all case study cities. For French and British colonial planners in African cities, water was more than just an urban service that was provided differently to various population groups. Water served as a tool of commerce, pacification, and boundary mediation, ultimately embodying larger colonial ideas of superiority and empire.