Everyday Ways of Knowing Risk in the Waterways of Accra

Abstract

As recent scholarship has shown, mega-infrastructures against flooding mediate risk and vulnerability across populations (Antone Payton, 2021; Kamath and Tiwari, 2022). Flooding is political, reflecting an uneven terrain of investment, maintenance and adaptation (Batubara et al., 2018; Henrique and Tschakert, 2019; Millington, 2021). Accra is no different. However, small-scale, everyday infrastructural negotiations of risk such as self-built flood barriers remain ignored in understandings of flood risk management, whether in policy or in scholarship. In this presentation I direct my attention to the heterogeneous ways of knowing and managing flood risk in Accra's waterways, made manifest in a range of drainage practices. I understand these knowledge and practices as diffuse and not restricted to experts; differently situated knowledges of flood risk shape infrastructural practices, space, and social relations around the waterway. In the midst of uneven exposure to flooding, residents express agency and attempt to solve problems, highlighting their role as urban makers who produce knowledge through spatial practice. While the role of the state remains crucial, the analysis here suggests that the ways of knowing risk that become evident through residents’ practices have the potential to shape risk management away from mega-infrastructures towards a compounding of small-scale interventions.