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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Implementing the MDG Water Target in Niger: a Post-Colonial Perspective
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32. Water in Africa: policies, politics and practices. National and local appropriation of global management models and paradigms
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| Paper ID | 539 |
| Author(s) |
Hansson, Stina
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | At the dawn of a new millennium the leaders of the UN member states gathered in New York for the solemn acceptance of the Millennium Declaration and the formulation of eight goals for global poverty reduction. The goals are considered by the international community to be ”the most broadly supported, comprehensive, and specific poverty reduction targets the world has ever established”. They are further considered unique in the way they are quantifiable and time-bound, as well as in the joint efforts and hopes that are invested in them. However, despite improvements in some regions and sectors, six years after the declaration, progress is slow, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, towards reaching Target 10, to halve by the year 2015, the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water. In Niger the proportion of the population using improved water sources is still less than 50 percent, and in rural areas it has, in fact, decreased between 1990 and 2002.
Drawing from empirical data on the implementation of the water target in Niger, this paper discusses the potentiality of a post-colonial approach in understanding the implementation of MDG Target 10. The paper provides an elaboration on the discursive formation surrounding Target 10, (including the EU Water Initiative, and the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development) and the specific relationship between power, discourse, and political institutions and practices it entails. In particular, the paper discusses the implementation of global policy recommendations in national policies and programs in terms of incorporation, resistance and hybridity, and how these processes make the direction taken by development projects, in this case MDG Target 10 to increase access to water, uncertain.
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