Abstract
The model and practice of infrastructure service provisioning have
changed substantially during the past decades. Since the 1980s,
infrastructure services have increasingly come to be run by private
operators, while the remaining state or municipal service provisioning
has seen its support and funding dwindle. In congruence with the
'neo-liberal consensus on urban development,' economic globalisation
has generated an international market for infrastructure services.
Transnational companies (TNCs) now provide local transport, electricity,
telecommunications and water services worldwide. These TNCs are
growing in size and importance with the re-shaping of utility politics
worldwide.
The global privatisation trend epitomises this global development
- a trend occurring simultaneously in both developing and developed
countries. Tanzania, in East Africa, undergoing structural adjustment
and massive privatisation, is no exception. At present the Dar es
Salaam Water and Sewerage Authority (DAWASA) is in the process of
being privatised. Water supply operations are being leased to a
British-German consortium, while the role of the public sector is
being limited to one of regulation and ownership of assets. State
withdrawal from the water sector is an ongoing process - already
manifest through the increasing role of independent water distributors,
non-governmental and community based organisations, as well as the
paucity of public infrastructure investment. This paper argues that
the formal privatisation of the water utility as well as the informalisation
of water deliveries on the ground are integral parts of economic
globalisation and the neo-liberal consensus on urban development.
While water privatisation is meant to be implemented in a transparent
fashion in order to increase competition, efficiency, as well as
private sector financing of water infrastructure, practice tangibly
diverts from how privatisation is promoted. While in the Tanzanian
case, transparency is attempted through information to the public
on Internet; the bidding process is secret and remains hidden from
public scrutiny. While the size and concentration of corporate power
in a few hands already threaten competition; only one company finally
offered to take on water operations in Dar es Salaam. Finally, private
financing of water infrastructure in Dar es Salaam is only a fraction
of what the public sector has to contribute in order to put the
water system in working order.
This paper focuses on how the global privatisation trend tallies
with local events in Dar es Salaam. It is fairly obvious that local
place-specific dynamics as well as international influences or conditionalities
for external financing together shape developments in Tanzania.
To what extent each matters and actually contributes to the unfolding
of events is more difficult to ascertain. Rather than attributing
the developments to either local or international influences, this
paper aims to situate the local outcomes in Dar es Salaam into the
appropriate global perspective.
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