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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain.
Sec. Circular Economy
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2025.1388175
This article is part of the Research Topic Accelerating the Circular Economy Transition: Innovations and Developments from Africa View all 12 articles

Effectiveness of Innovative Circular Technologies for Sustainable Rural Freshwater Supply in Tanzania

Provisionally accepted
Christopher Simeon Awinia Christopher Simeon Awinia *
  • The Open University of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The present study was conducted in two villages situated in the Ruvu-Wami River Basin upstream catchment area in the Kilosa district. The area was experiencing multiple competing water-use activities exacerbated by climate-change-induced human activities and livestock in-migration. Due to the pressure imposed on hydrological resources, new water-points were installed while defective ones were not being repaired. The study was guided by two objectives: (a) to investigate the extent to which new innovative circular technologies improved the overall financial sustainability of freshwater schemes and (b) to determine the extent to which financial sustainability contributed to the technical sustainability and overall sustainability of the rural freshwater supply. This study used Lockwood, Bakalian, and Wakeman's eight dimensions of sustainability as a conceptual framework to investigate the extent to which innovative circular technologies increased the financial, technical, and overall sustainability of rural freshwater schemes. Data were collected from 131 households through a quantitative semi-structured survey; these data were complemented by qualitative data involving 116 focus group discussions. One key finding is that the innovative circular technologies demonstrated a capability to increase the financial sustainability of water schemes. However, deficiencies in technical sustainability affected this potential, leading to high dissatisfaction and low expectations among water users. This resulted in various failures, which affected the overall sustainability of the innovative circular technologies, showing the close interrelationship between social acceptance and technological and financial sustainability. Six important recommendations have been made, specifically concerning the importance of financial and technical capacity, community ownership, social acceptance, community participation, change management, and procurement standards which affect the quality of the physical water infrastructure network

    Keywords: sustainability, rural freshwater schemes, innovative circular water technologies, Water circularity, community-owned water organisations (COWSOs)

    Received: 19 Feb 2024; Accepted: 10 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Awinia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Christopher Simeon Awinia, The Open University of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

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