Water (not) in the news: more evidence of water supply being sidelined in #uchaguzitz



(Click on the image to see a larger version)

How much coverage does water supply get in national newspapers? Answer, not much. In the past year since Daraja has been monitoring the press, there was a peak of stories around Maji Week and World Water Day in March, but otherwise not much. And in the election campaign period, the number of stories has been even lower than usual, presumably since space is taken up with other campaign issues.
I should add that this is based on a quick-and-dirty analysis of stories in the national newspapers that reach Njombe each day. It's therefore subject to the caveat that not all papers reached Njombe daily. Usually there are only 7-10 papers available, some days less, some more, but the exact papers available on any given day varies widely.

And unfortunately, we can't use the data we have to compare the water sector with other sectors, since the main purpose of doing this monitoring is to make sure we don't miss important water- and governance-related stories each week.

But the key point remains: water supply is not an election issue, at least at national level, in the current Tanzanian election.