Research Project SWASH Sustainable Wastewater Systems for Ghana

SWASH (Sustainable Wastewater Systems for Ghana) is a DANIDA financed project (Project nr. 21-MO2-RUC). SWASH delivers new research knowledge and capacity strengthening for Ghanaian institutions to achieve water sustainability.

The 3 year project undertakes extensive fieldwork in the rapidly growing coastal city of Tema, east of Ghana’s capital Accra. Water governance comprises a highly complex social and political field of diverse public, private, state, and non-state actors and institutions. These often pursue competing interests and are organized according to different logics and rationales.

SWASH contributes to achieving viable solutions by investigating the role of informality in government’s efforts to achieve sustainable urban water systems and undertaking a holistic and interdisciplinary analysis of different sites and institutions and approaches water system development as an inherently non-linear and political process, as well as necessarily technical, natural, and economic.

Together with original research, SWASH contributes to DANIDA ongoing Strategic Sector Cooperation on urban water by building partnerships and strengthening capacity. The research is undertaken by Roskilde University, University of Ghana, and University of Miami, and the project partners with Tema Metropolitan Assembly, Ghana Water Company Ltd, and the City of Aarhus.