DIAL

ADJEGAN Komlavi II 

Doctorant

komlavi-ii.adjegan@dauphine.eu

 

Axes de recherche

Applied microeconomics, Water infrastructures, Health economics, Population dynamics, Gentrification, Political economy, Sub-Saharan Africa.

komlavi-adjegan

 

Thèse en cours : Drinking Water Infrastructures and Living Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa

 

Université Paris Dauphine
Sous la direction de Flore GUBERT et Camille SAINT-MACARY
Date d’inscription : Décembre 2021

 

The dissertation investigates the impacts of drinking water access on the living conditions of populations in Sub-Saharan Africa. We estimate the causal effects of access to water infrastructures on households’ livelihood outcomes, using primary data from a four-wave survey “Water, Sanitation and Living Conditions” conducted between 2018 and 2021 in suburban neighborhoods of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The surveys were designed as a quasi-experimental trial to evaluate the impact of the “Promotion de modalités Innovantes pour l’Accès à l’Eau Potable (PILAEP)” project, a community-led water supply intervention.

The first chapter analyzes the impacts of “Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)” interventions on the mental health of individuals aged 15 years and over on one hand, and the education of household members between the ages of 5 and 20 on the other hand. To the best of our knowledge, there is little evidence in the economic literature on these relationships. In addition, the existing pieces of literature on this topic yield ambiguous results. In this paper, we provide new and rigorous evidence on the relationship between WASH interventions and both mental health and education, and explore the causal mechanisms at work.

The second chapter examines whether WASH interventions lead to a displacement of low-income households and their replacement by wealthier ones (gentrification effect). We estimate the effect of the intervention on the household socio-demographic composition of the neighborhoods and the dynamics of population mobility in and out of the study area.

In the third chapter, we analyze the political economy of WASH interventions and assess the extent to which community management could guarantee the sustainability of the infrastructures acquired, and ensure the achievement of the intervention outcomes in the long run. We intend to provide an empirically grounded and analytically sound inquiry into the performance and sustainability of the decentralized water services in the outskirts of Kinshasa through the lens of governance and social cohesion in the community.