Affordable energy and water are out of reach for the urban poor. Providing both is simple.
I’m an engineer and I visited Kampala, the capital of Uganda, last month and saw firsthand how slum dwellers get electricity, cooking fuel and water.
Dr. Pasquine Ogunsanya, who runs a health clinic in an area called Namuwongo, took me around to interview some of the residents who lived by the railroad tracks. People here live in semi-permanent houses made of various scraps, straw and mud, without toilets. Many buildings are leased and built by entrepreneurs on land they do not own. There are community toilets, but people have to pay to use them, and many cannot afford them. Therefore, without a good drainage system, residents can pollute the ditches and surrounding areas. When heavy rains come, flooding can worsen living conditions and pose health risks.
I spoke with the homes we visited through a narrow lens of the topics I researched: the cost, quality, and reliability of lighting, water, and cooking. But it’s hard not to miss the larger context: precarious livelihoods, poverty, poor health, a vicious cycle of debt, and children without a decent education. These conditions are not unique to Namuwongo; nearly half the population of Kampala, a metropolitan area of 3.7 million, lives in slums.
During my visit during the day, I saw mainly women and children at home. A 60-square-foot space with no kitchen, sink, bathroom or faucet rents for about $20 a month. There is no formal tenancy agreement, so you have no right to complain if there is a dangerously sloped mud-grass wall or a hole in a tin roof. You rent by accepting or leaving. Rent per square foot is only slightly lower, or maybe half that of a rental unit in Kampala, which is solidly built, has a kitchen, bathroom and toilet, and is connected to utility infrastructure and services.
Slum dwellers pay exorbitant rates for meager energy connections. (Vijay Modi)
Ceiling-mounted light bulbs and cell phones are the only visible appliances in these homes. For electricity, people pay a flat rate of $3.50 per month. Landlords who provide this power charge about $1 per unit of electricity—about five times what Uganda or U.S. utilities charge. Ironically, Uganda currently has a surplus of electricity.
Slum dwellers pay about $5 a month for drinking water. This is two to three plastic containers of 15 to 20 liters per day. People take these things to a place controlled by a middleman who in turn has access to metered public taps. For every 1,000 liters (265 gallons) they might consume in a month (my family consumes this much in a day), they pay almost double the cost of raw water piped to my home in New York City. That’s 30 times what the utilities in my parents’ home country of India charge, where labor, distribution, and water quality costs may be similar. On top of that, most water prices in developed countries include the cost of sewage collection, treatment and disposal — clauses that are completely absent for slum dwellers.
For cooking fuel, Namuwongo residents rely almost entirely on charcoal, supplemented by scrap wood fragments from discarded furniture, doors or other items. They pay about $15 a month for about 30kg of charcoal—a ridiculously high level of spending relative to their income. Health and environmental concerns aside, if one tunes their basic stove to perform less well compared to a gas stove, it’s not as good as my hometown in western India (piped gas to every home, supplied by a private company) , which in turn obtains imported LNG at commercial prices from mainline gas pipelines.
In short, people who are already poor are paying exorbitant prices for services and consumer goods that other city dwellers get more affordable. People in slums may have to choose between buying milk or paying for lighting, primary education or charcoal. Because of the very high population density adjacent to existing utility infrastructure, the cost of such services should actually be much lower than those with larger property sizes or rural settings.
Most people rely on charcoal and wood chips for cooking. (Vijay Modi)
Economists argue that slums make it possible for those trying to escape rural poverty to seize the economic opportunities offered by cities. Of course they do, so there is no doubt that urbanization is inevitable. But this does not relieve society of the obligation to serve slum dwellers on the same terms as other city dwellers. While the word slum connotes short lives, lack of services, and all the negative associations with crime and poor health, it is society itself that largely makes this prophecy come true.
It could take decades to build the millions of sturdy urban housing units needed in Uganda alone. But while we wait, depriving slum dwellers of the most basic services is unacceptable. We can discuss what comes first: governance, community mobilization, NGO support, legal protections for tenants, requiring landlords to invest – or evictions of landlords and tenants altogether. These debates are site-specific. Meanwhile, landlords make money by providing services without the oversight of normal utility companies.
As an engineer, I think a more direct approach is needed: requiring utility companies to serve everyone, even those without formal street addresses, formal lease contracts, or even structural walls to install meters. The engineer’s job is to design around these constraints. My point is that energy, water and sanitation are public services, so governments need to intervene heavily and provide upfront subsidies to utilities if necessary to achieve this. Public funds can already serve other urban populations and, increasingly, small towns and villages.
Expecting poor people to organize their own cooperatives or come up with their own community-based solutions, or self-financing decentralized options through rainwater harvesting, solar lights, locally produced briquettes, waste-to-energy, etc., is not satisfactory. solution or compost toilet. These are all good ideas, and if it’s the poor man’s choice, they’re all their power. But for those who have the resources and time to invest in new ways of self-provisioning, such innovations make more sense, arguably off the grid. In my opinion, slums in densely populated cities need utility services and are supported by the same corporate and technological forces that benefit the rest of the urban population.
When technological innovations such as water reuse or stand-alone solar/battery systems become affordable and reliable, they make sense for the poor. But the rich will be the first to adopt these, and reduce costs. For now, we need to deploy what we know works: simply bring service in the form of wires or pipes to your residence, no matter how humble it may be. Given how little space slum dwellers occupy and their proximity to existing infrastructure, the cost of providing services will be a fraction of what it would cost to serve the urban middle class or the rural poor. There is no reason to wait. It may not be feasible to build a private toilet for each housing unit, but in an urban setting clean public toilets are technically and economically feasible.
East Africa has substantial fossil fuel resources compared to expected consumption in the next few years. Construction of oil and gas pipelines will begin soon. If all goes well, government budgets, fuel and funds will not be in short supply. What may be in short supply is commitment to the poor.
Living next to the tracks means you are forgotten and hidden. When former US President Donald Trump visited my hometown in India, the local government put up walls along the road so he wouldn’t see slum dwellers. This was on a quick stop from the airport to visit the Gandhi Ashram, where Gandhi lived with social outcasts precisely to give them dignity and visibility.
I can’t express my emotions to the people I met in Namuwongo who, despite their poor living conditions, had hope in their eyes and were trying to move forward. Tears had to wait until I got back to the luxury hotel minutes away.
Kampala is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to, on the rolling hills of Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile. On the morning of my visit, a thunderous tropical downpour had given way to brilliant sunshine. In a city full of trees, plenty of rain, sunshine, and fertile soil, it’s hard to imagine why the price of poverty is so absurd. With such low levels of consumption, slum dwellers may be some of the most sustainable inhabitants on the planet. Yet for them, affordable energy and water remain a dream.
