Funded PhD Scholarships on accountability for water in Africa
We’re pleased to announce two exciting opportunities to work with Water Witness International and our partners to lead ground-breaking research on water and accountability via PhD scholarships funded by the Scottish Government’s Hydro Nation Scholars Programme. I'd be grateful for your help in circulating details of these opportunities among your networks so that we can find the best candidates.
PhD #1. Raising Voice for Water Security: the dynamics of citizenship, engagement and volunteerism in accountability processes in Africa
Working with the School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/gsd), Mzumbe University, Tanzania. Through country case studies and field work with communities in one or more of Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia and Liberia, the research will focus on understanding the factors which encourage and enable people – in particular, women and marginalised communities - to demand their rights around water, sanitation, climate resilience and environmental protection. The insights generated by the work will support the growing community of policy makers and practitioners who see accountability and rights-based approaches as the key to delivering UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: sustainable access to safe water and sanitation for all.
For more details of the application process and a project description please see:
PhD#2: Participation, inclusion, transparency, integrity and rights to water provision in Dar es Salaam.
For study with the University of Glasgow and University of Dar es Salaam. The aim is to understand the role of social accountability interventions (SAIs) in improving the responsiveness of local regulatory authorities to the need for clean and accessible water, specifically by stimulating engagement by citizens. The objectives include:
1) using the data from the baseline survey already conducted in Dar es Salaam, to identify the social, economic and political factors which facilitate engagement with regulatory authorities and providers in defence of water rights.
2) to use evaluation methodologies (theory of change analysis) to conduct a post-hoc evaluation of the effectiveness of SAIs conducted by Water Witness International and its local partners, Shahidi wa Maji.
3) to triangulate findings from the baseline survey and evaluation study to produce recommendations on how SAIs in the water sector can be made more effective.
Details of the project and of how to apply are to be found here:
Closing date for applications for both opportunities is the 31st January 2019
Applicants must have a first class or upper second-class bachelor’s degree, a relevant postgraduate qualification, and/or at least 2 years relevant experience, and must be able to demonstrate a high level of competence in conducting research and academic writing. We strongly encourage suitably qualified African scholars to apply.