The experience of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The article addresses the process of privatization of the Dar es Salaam Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DAWASA). It provides background information about the situation of water and sanitation services in Dar es Salaam during the 1990s and discusses the decision of the Tanzanian Government to privatize the public utility taken in 1997, as part of far-reaching reforms agreed with international financial institutions and development agencies. The article provides details of the difficult process of privatization, that took around 6 years to complete, and highlights pros and cons associated with the privatization of essential public services in the Tanzanian context.

The SPIPRW Series has the objective of making available edited materials based on the final reports of the PRINWASS Project (https://waterlat.org/projects-2/prinwass/). This project was carried out between 2001 and 2004 and was funded by the European Union’s Fifth Framework Programme. The project carried out case studies in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, England and Wales, Finland, Greece, Kenya, Mexico, and Tanzania, and developed comparative analyses of the main findings. Although the original reports were freely available by request, and we produced several specific publications based on the project’s findings, much of the material remains largely unknown and, for this reason, we launched the SPIPRW Series to facilitate the dissemination of research results.