Water, Gender and Power

This week, whilst trying to find information for my next blog post, I came across a TEDxTalks called 'Africas Post-Colonial Development' by Fatoumata Waggeh. It struck me how important it is to highlight this background when I am talking about development issues in Africa.  Fatoumata asks the question at the start 'why are resource-rich African countries, like Nigeria, underdeveloped?'. Obviously, this is a very complex question but she highlights that the practices and policies of development institutions, specifically, Bretton Wood institutions have exacerbated the issue. Going back to the post WW2 era when development practice became mainstream, wealthy western institutions set up programmes such as the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to help countries, like Nigeria, to develop. Although, these programmes forced governments to radically privatise education and health in order to receive their loans. This was in line with neoliberal capitalism ideology permeat