This study evaluates the effectiveness of nightlight intensity, population density and spatial network analysis towards understanding rapid urban growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania between 1990 and 2020. This contributes towards solving the issue of data insufficiencies which often lie at the heart of problems associated with rapid urban growth. This research finds that many new insights can be drawn from analysis of open-source datasets, facilitating improved understanding of rapid urban growth, and offering a replicable, accessible methodology.

With less than a decade left to deliver the Sustainable Development Goal of universal access to water and sanitation, innovative and inclusive new approaches are needed to address the ongoing challenge of urban Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS). WSS has long been misrecognised as a technical issue of facilities and infrastructure, obscuring the complex socio-political drivers that shape distributional injustices in service provision. Furthermore, marginalised groups disproportionately suffering WSS injustices, such as informal settlement residents, are typically excluded from the WSS decision-making that could alleviate their struggles. The co-production of knowledge through partnerships with informal settlement residents is gaining interest as a potentially transformative method to address WSS injustices through improving recognition of the multifaceted and heterogeneous realities within informal settlements and empowering the political participation of informal settlement residents. Despite widespread academic enthusiasm, much of the literature remains broadly conceptual. This dissertation contributes to the debate by examining how knowledge co-production can help alleviate WSS service provision injustices through the specific case of the Centre for Community Initiative’s activities in the informal settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The combined theoretical lenses of environmental justice and Feminist Political Ecology deliver a nuanced perspective on knowledge co-production that emphasises the importance of local context, heterogeneity within and between informal settlements and the complexity of ‘transformative change’.

Poor water and sanitation brings health inequalities in Dar es Salaam, which sets great challenges to achieve health justice. Finding routes to water and sanitation equity is an important development agenda in Dar es Salaam. To answer the research question about how the current water and sanitation governance of Dar es Salaam affects health justice, the dissertation adopts literature review and case study to have an analysis. Through literature review, vulnerabilities in the relationship between poor water and sanitation and health inequalities in Dar es Salaam are founded. Through three cases, Kombo (Ilala Municipality), Keko Machungwa (Temeke Municipality) and Tandale Slum, interactions among all kinds of determinants and stakeholders in Dar es Salaam’ water and sanitation governance are analysed and discussed. Drawing the analytical framework of health justice, all cases are analysed from environmental justice, social justice and planning justice, these three aspects that help to achieve health justice. In the end, the dissertation identifies future challenges to water and sanitation equity in Dar es Salaam and proposes recommendations to the local and global water and sanitation governance.