Life in informal settlements is characterized by cramped living conditions, a lack of infrastructure such as basic sanitation with drinking water, toilets and washrooms, as well as unsecured tenure. Nevertheless, a considerable number of people in the lower income brackets have to live in these settlements, which is particularly challenging for women and children. Women are primarily responsible for domestic chores and family work and often lack unhindered access to employment opportunities. Women's scope for action is often limited at a family, societal and political level.
The GIRT project builds on knowledge about informal settlements that the project members have gained in previous joint research activities. Together, they aim to identify approaches that can lead to an improvement in the daily living conditions of women in the informal settlements studied.
Transdisciplinarity in the Global South
In the course of the project in general and a recent project meeting in Addis Ababa in particular, it became clear that transdisciplinary research has so far mainly been tested in the context of societal challenges in Western industrialized nations. For this reason, GIRT must first work out how transdisciplinarity can function under the completely different framework conditions that exist in many countries of the Global South. "There are no one-fits-all solutions. We have to design transdisciplinary research for the respective African realities," emphasizes project leader Tania Berger.
Therefore, the project started by conducting around 400 interviews with women living in informal settlements in one Mozambiquan and three Ethiopian cities. Based on regionalised, semi-structured interview guides, members of all GIRT partner universities spent time talking to and interacting with female residents of selected neigbhourhoods in Addis Ababa, Mekelle and Bahir Dar in Ethiopia and Nampula in Mozambique to find out about a broad range of aspects of their residential environment.
Preliminary results of these interviews confirm that tenure insecurity, lack of jobs, and lack of access to basic infrastructure constitute the most pressing concerns in the interviewees' daily lives. However, the interviews also highlighted distinct regional differences: in the northern Ethiopian city of Mekelle, the repercussions of the recent civil war (and fears of further armed conflicts) are still palpable. Even venturing outdoors can sometimes be risky for women in Bahir Dar due to the ongoing conflict in this region. By contrast, despite being formally acknowledged renters, several women in the selected district in Addis Ababa fear being evicted from their homes as part of the ongoing city regeneration projects. In Nampula, Mozambique, interviewees struggle with high rates of petty crime in their area, and some report the formation of neighbourhood vigilante groups as a consequence thereof.
GIRT researchers will, therefore, have to take such specifically local framework conditions into account when setting up transdisciplinary processes in the regions as a next step in the project’s work plan. Therein, many of them foresee engaging local authorities and their representatives in meaningful dialogue with informal residents as the most challenging task.
