Repairing the city? Water infrastructure maintenance, politics, and urban inequality in Accra and Dar es Salaam
Funding period: 1 December 2025 – 31 July 2026
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69752/PDW4-C969
Award Number: USF-INT-251006
Dr Lazarus Jambadu holds a joint PhD in Human Geography and Spatial Planning from Utrecht University (Netherlands) and TU Darmstadt (Germany). His research examines urban infrastructure systems, with a focus on maintenance and repair practices and how these shape access to water and infrastructure resilience in African cities.
Building on his doctoral work, this Fellowship project explores the often-overlooked dimensions of maintenance and repair in urban water supply systems, using Accra and Dar es Salaam as case studies. While much of the existing scholarship emphasises water access, governance, and policy reforms, the routine yet vital practices of maintaining and repairing water infrastructures remain underexplored. This project seeks to answer two central questions: (1) How do everyday practices of maintenance and repair influence patterns of uneven water access and spatial inequality in cities? and (2) How do the politics and institutional arrangements surrounding these practices shape the marginalisation and precarity of repair workers and their labour? The overarching aim is to illuminate the hidden but essential role of maintenance labour in sustaining urban life and shaping the material and social fabric of cities. By examining the social relations, institutional dynamics, and everyday struggles embedded in repair work, the study seeks to advance our understanding of the politics of maintenance and their role in reproducing urban inequalities in service delivery.
As a USF International Fellow, Dr Jambadu will spend eight months at Ardhi University’s Institute of Human Settlement Studies under the mentorship of Professor Wilbard Kombe to advance this research agenda.
Profile at Orcid | Profile at Linkedin | jambadulazarus@gmail.com