Locating community participation in a water supply project—the Galanefhi Water Project (Eritrea)

Abstract

Water projects, like sustainable development projects in general, often tend to become unsustainable because they are guided by top-down strategies which exclude the input, influence and ownership of projects by their beneficiaries. For attaining sustainable development, the social capital of communities must be harnessed—beneficiaries of development need to be conscientised through a process of establishing self-awareness that their indigenous knowledge can lead to empowering participation and sustainable development. The international call for the participation of project beneficiaries places participation, as a people-centred strategy, within the capacity-building debate—beneficiaries should not only have a stake in projects, they ideally should own it. This ‘new’, even controversial, emphasis on participation calls for a re-assessment of participation as a capacity-building and empowerment strategy. The article evaluates the effect of participation in a water supply project in Eritrea, designating some of the related issues within the participation debate. The aim of the article is not to cover the total rural context of the case study, only the specific relationship between water project implementation and participatory development.