“Money is Not the Problem”: The Slow Financialisation of Kenya’s Water Sector

This paper analyses the “arduous and contingent” process of creating the “preconditions” for financialised forms of development in urban Kenya. Building on a growing critical literature on how finance is shaping development in the global South, the paper traces the more-or-less concerted effort of an array of actors and intermediaries to create a functioning market for urban water services. Such efforts, which are justified through appeals to a “finance gap” are an attempt to connect capital seeking profitable investment opportunities with a sector long starved of funding. The pursuit of financialised models of water provision, however, is deepening the gulf between service areas that are deemed profitable (or potentially profitable) and those that are not. The paper argues that it is not lack of money, but an emerging system of water service provision which prioritises commercial principles and value extraction, that shapes where investment does (and crucially) does not flow