Grassroots Insights into Urban Risk: Creating Interdisciplinary Pathways to Resilience in Dar es Salaam

Although informal settlements face multiple risks often rooted in poor-quality shelter, inadequate services and unresponsive local governance, these challenges are usually tackled in sectoral silos without the voices or detailed knowledge of residents themselves. But residents of informal settlements already have in-depth insights into key risks, while community-led data-collection can provide the basis for partnerships with official stakeholders to enhance resilience. During this project in Dar es Salaam, UK-based interdisciplinary researchers will work with Tanzanian grassroots organisations to examine multiple risks in informal settlements, including secondary data-analysis and additional participatory action research. While focusing on inadequate sanitation and solid waste management, the team’s analysis will look to encourage intersectoral strategies and create a platform for inclusive, co-produced interventions with government actors to foster resilience to multiple risks. The project is seeking to promote local buy-in as well as broader replicability by using the partners’ existing networks, novel communications outputs and South-South learning opportunities.

Principal Investigator: Dr Anna Walnycki, International Institute for Environment and Development