Water Price, Community, and Technology: The Impact and Meaning of ‘Water ATMs’ in the Mathare Valley of Nairobi

Abstract:

Globally, the urban poor have far worse access to services like clean water and sanitation than the rich. This project investigates a technological intervention being deployed in Nairobi’s slums that ostensibly improves water access: prepaid water dispensers. By using electronic payments, the “water ATMs” promise to cut out the rent-seeking vendors that sell water to households in slums at 10–100 times the scheduled tariff. This thesis investigates how water ATMs have impacted the urban communities of Mathare Valley in Nairobi.
 
By performing OLS regression analysis on data from an original survey of 654 households, I find that water ATMs have nearly halved average water prices paid by households. However, 45 percent of households using the ATMs report paying prices higher than the digitally-fixed price. This is because some community-based organizations that manage the water ATMs are seeking water rents from ATM users. Ethnographic interviews with the members of these organizations muddy our normatively-charged understanding of “rent-seeking” as rapaciousness. Water rents are not necessarily understood as exploitation, but instead thought of as the legitimate and formally sanctioned right of community-based organizations. Water ATMs are thus understood as disruptions to this social arrangement.