Community Participation as a Strategy to Address Water Shortage: A Tale of Bigwa and Lukuyu Wards in Morogoro

Abstract

The efforts to involve the community in determining their own destination in terms of needs and resources can only be achieved when citizens play an active role and at some degree demonstrate significant power and influence on decisions. Community power and influence are key elements embedded in the governance circle. Community participation in the governance, ceteris Paribas, enhances citizens’ skills and capacity to support their own projects. Therefore, the notion of community participation cannot be overemphasized. The thorough examination of it at its initial stage is imperative. In that regard, this article examines how local community members of Bigwa and Lukuyu wards participated in MABILU water project. Data were collected from ordinary members of the respective wards, Ward Executive Officers (WEOs), neighbourhood chairpersons and water project representatives. Interview and Content analysis were used to collect and analyse the data respectively.The results indicate that the successfulness of MABILU water project was attributed by the fact that the citizens were involved from the initial stage of decision making to implementation stage. While 63% of the participants confirmed to have participated in initiating and decision making about the project, 80% of total respondents confirmed to have participated in the implementation stage. The findings show that community members participated in digging and burying trench, contributing money to facilitate the implementation, carrying building materials and cleaning the project area. Some community members participated by encouraging other members to support the project, managing and supervising the projects and supervising the construction of water kiosk.