Background

Keith Popple has clearly outlined in Chapters 1 and 2 how the impact of neoliberalism is destroying the notion of democracy and representation, and has created severe inequality and social and economic injustice for communities. How global investment in London is remaking this capital city for profit while badly distorting the housing market in favour of the wealthy. It is a view of neoliberalism that Cedric Johnson, writing in the Jacobin magazine, concurs with, adding that ‘[t] he experience of neo-liberalization … has left joblessness, a crisis of affordable housing, economic insecurity and social precarity in its wake’ (2020: 132). Monbiot and Hutchison are clear that it is an ideology that has seen the rich becoming richer and more powerful with the rest of us becoming poorer and no longer ‘citizens’ but ‘consumers’ (2024). It is a process occurring in other major cities around the world, whereby investment seeking profits via property development and rental value is displacing existing communities and their livelihoods. However, as Lee and Edwards argue, what is happening across London is uniquely different:

Introduction

We have titled the final chapter ‘Whose City? Communities versus Capital’ as that is at the heart of this book. We have shown how neoliberalism's corrosive impact on democratic society, its institutions, the lives of people, their communities, and politics in general, is a global phenomenon. It has encroached on many, if not all, aspects of our daily lives. It has produced a stupefied version of ‘goggles’ through which we view what is happening to us, and around us, with its destruction of the ‘social’ as normal, as ‘common sense’. We are still experiencing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis with excuses to burden the people of the Earth with more austerity and further inequality. These events, and many more within national boundaries, have produced catastrophes exacerbated by neoliberal greed and government negligence, with global income inequality substantially increasing (Deaton, 2021), so the rich get richer and more powerful. Meanwhile, the rest of us get poorer, with the growing numbers of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder now out of sight.

The neoliberal ‘takeover’ of London by corporate developers, global investors and the ‘super-rich’, with profits for shareholders paramount, irrespective of the impact on working-class communities who are deemed as mere collateral damage, is but one example of where this is happening and which forms the central argument of this book. Cities such as London, together with those across the UK and indeed the world, are evolving in the image of those with the power and the money to determine citizens’ futures.

Introduction

In the previous chapter we examined the centrality of neoliberalism in determining and shaping global and national economic and political affairs and how this powerful regressive hegemonic project creates and sustains growing poverty and inequality. At the same time neoliberalism produces and reproduces massive financial gains for global corporations and the already super-rich.

We considered how these global corporations together with national governments and international financial organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as enormously wealthy individuals, have advocated neoliberal economic and social policies that encourage and reward the privatization of public assets, and the reductions in progressive taxation. This approach goes hand-in-glove with imposing legal restrictions on trade unions and reducing spending on key public services like education and health services.

To further understand the extent of the far-reaching tentacles of neoliberalism we introduced the writings of the neo-Marxist philosopher, writer and political activist Antonio Gramsci, whose erudite work on cultural hegemony demonstrates how the ruling elite shapes culture for its own advantage. This dominant ideology is presented as ‘common sense’, ‘natural’ and ‘inevitable’, which contributes to enabling the powerful and super-rich to subordinate and exploit the majority.

In this chapter, we look at efforts to counter the neoliberal hegemony. We do this by first considering the impact neoliberalism has on democracy, which some consider, in its present form, is not fit for purpose (Lim, 2017).

Introduction

There is little doubt that we are living in a precarious, turbulent and uncertain period in our global history. A world where vast inequalities are increasingly opening between and within countries. This phenomenon is in parallel with, and often a significant contributor to, a series of dangerous outbreaks of conflict around the world as countries face down geopolitical threats. We are now living in a constantly changing strategic environment with more conflicts than at any time since 1945 (Wintour, 2025). Added to this, there are widespread concerns that in many countries democracy is severely at risk. At the same time there is a growing global climate emergency of momentous proportions. Mixed into this dangerous scenario, governments and people everywhere are dealing with the outcomes of the unpredictable, unorthodox, authoritarian approach of the world's most powerful elected politician, Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

Almost daily, in the UK, we are confronted with seeing or hearing about the growing real-life difficulties facing millions of people living in poverty and unable to properly feed themselves and their children while struggling to pay for the heating and lighting of their home (JRF, 2024). According to a report from the independent Social Metrics Commission (2024), 24 per cent of the UK population is judged to be in poverty, with more than a third of all children (36 per cent) in poverty in 2022/2023. This is an almost five percentage point increase since 2019/2020.

Being supposedly adapted to the living circumstances of ‘the poor’, PAYGo is claimed to be inclusive because it is ‘affordable and convenient for those with irregular incomes’ (GSMA, 2017: 5) and, unlike monthly billing, allows ‘the poor’ to buy ‘what they can, when they can, when they need it’ (Mastercard, 2020: 4). It ‘empowers’ users by granting them ‘valuable control’ (Waldron et al, 2018) over their consumption. Instead of having to rely on kiosk attendants, who close the kiosk for lunch breaks and at night, the ‘convenience of mobile payments’ (Waldron et al, 2018) enables the user to fetch water at any, and in less, time by avoiding queues at the kiosk. The literal imagination of ‘pay-as-you-drink’ (Waldron et al, 2018) not only portrays water as a commodity, but the mobile money-enabled PAYGo system also invokes its users as digitally included customers who are enabled and free to obtain water at their own convenience, simply by placing self-recharged smart cards on an intuitive user interface.

The Rock Foundation which funded the implementation of 30 water dispensers in three different villages in Kondo Ward (Chapter 6) wanted to show that once Planetary View (PV) pulled out of the project it would be able to be ‘self-reliant’ in the sense that the revenue generated by the water sales would be sufficient to cover the operation and maintenance of the system (Harry, personal communication, August 2017).

Several authors have engaged with the endeavours of private companies or philanthrocapitalist organizations to test solutions for the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) in the field and pointed out inconsistencies in such approaches. Dolan and Roll (2013) show how, in Procter and Gamble's approach to selling sanitary products to schoolgirls in Accra, menstruation is reframed from a maturation process to a hygienic problem requiring a market-based solution in the form of a sanitary pad. Irani (2019) shows how the development of water filters in India by an non-governmental organization (NGO), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&GF), was determined from the beginning by funding policies that regard clean water as free of waterborne diseases, rather than free of fluoride, which was the major concern of the people for whom the filters were to be manufactured. Borland (2011) points out that the PlayPump, a pump for use in the Global South and powered by a children's roundabout, was primarily designed for its audiences in the Global North rather than for its users. Cross (2013) shows how a solar light was, from the beginning, not only designed for poor consumers, but also to be attractive to venture capital funds by, for example, foregrounding user participation. Thereby any changes made in response to user feedback only took place within clear pre-set parameters regarding aesthetics and functionality. However, even when designers are willing to reframe their projects in line with user feedback, they re-define them anew in market-based terms. For example, Schwittay (2014) has pointed out how a financial inclusion project responded to ethnographic findings by moving from a financial management app to income generation and financial empowerment programmes.

The development of large-scale, capital-intensive infrastructure projects – such as road, water, sewerage or electricity networks, railroads or gas supply – to be carried out by one central development actor – the state – was seen as the foundation of nation building and economic growth for countries post-independence (Elyachar, 2012; Collier et al, 2017). Although since the start of the millennium there has been a resurgence of large-scale water projects,1 there has also been an increasing turn towards ‘little development devices’ (Collier et al, 2017) that are often promoted by multinational corporations (MNCs), philanthropic foundations or social enterprises. Little development devices build upon the critique of megalomaniac development projects of the past, which often failed to consider diverse societal contexts or to deliver their promises of progress. Little development devices are utilized in areas and for populations that are regarded as dwelling on the margins of the incomplete networked, large-scale infrastructure projects. Water filters (Redfield, 2012) are supposed to replace water networks, solar lanterns (Cross, 2013) overcome the lack of electricity networks and pit latrines solve the lack of sewerage networks (Chalfin and Binjaku, 2017; Thieme, 2017). Thereby, these devices are ideally designed in such a way that they anticipate the failures of their environments, for example by being extra robust or being able to function in dusty or unsanitary environments. Instead of trying to bring about utopias of grandiose futures, these devices are designed to work on a small scale and provide more immediate solutions, with often measurable and testable outcomes (Collier et al, 2017).

PAYGo water dispensers – also referred to as automatic water dispensers or water ATMs – are the result of the efforts of the Danish multinational pump manufacturer Pumpinski A/S3[ (hereafter Pumpinski), which decided to enter the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) market with a new technology in 2007.

The PAYGo water dispenser comes with smart cards and a cloud-connected water management system (WMS) (Figure 0.2). The dispenser can be installed at any water point. It features a simple and intuitive user interface and a card reader that uses radio-frequency-identification (RFID) to read the blue customer smart cards. A display above the card reader shows the balance on the card, the amount of water dispensed and the price per litre. The user places their prepaid smart card in the reader and presses a button on the interface to start the water flowing; the cost is automatically deducted from the card balance shown on the dispenser display.

The UK-based Rock Foundation was founded in 2005 by Jack Rock and his family, and in 2010, it had an endowment of £47 million. Jack Rock made his fortune in financial services and describes himself on the Foundation's website as an ‘entrepreneur’ and self-proclaimed ‘venture philanthropist’. Just as Harry, the director of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes at the Rock Foundation explained to me in the quote above, the Foundation states on its website that it wants to be a ‘pioneering, innovative and a disruptive influence’ through testing and advocating market-based solutions in the water and sanitation sector and bringing them to scale. The Rock Foundation seeks to establish market-based water supply systems that are maintained by small start-ups and provide their customers with water services. From its perspective, not enough attention has been paid to the financial viability of services and, to improve financial viability, service providers would need to make their service delivery much more effective.

Since the early 2010s, the Kenyan water sector has been subject to the creation of the ‘preconditions’ (Williams, 2021) for financialized forms of water provision, especially in urban areas. The Kenyan water sector reflects a ‘chronic investment gap’ (WASREB, 2018: 21) in infrastructural development and service delivery. In 2015, a major World Bank and Kenyan Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB) report argued that KSh726 billion (US$7.1 billion) were needed to achieve the goal of universal water coverage by 2030 (WSP and WASREB, 2015). To close this gap, the Kenyan government and various international organizations have been progressively restructuring the water sector in an attempt to attract commercial and private sector financing (Williams, 2021). To ‘de-risk’ the financial capital available (mostly) in the Global North and ‘escort’ (Gabor, 2021) it into development projects such as those in Kenya, water utilities were advised to create reliable revenue streams by working towards reducing non-revenue water (NRW) by formalizing water connections and, thus, commodifying water. The subsequent revenue streams would then form the basis for investable financial products for domestic and international capital. For example, the Dutch water sector established and funded two organizations in Kenya – the Kenya Innovative Finance Facility for Water and the Kenya Pooled Water Fund – with the mission to provide early-stage capital – that is, to ‘blend’ revenue streams – in order to create viable investment opportunities for private financing (Savelli et al, 2018; Williams, 2021).

PAYGo water dispensers: different models and concepts

The Pumpinski Tie2Life department was set up in 2007 to develop PAYGo water dispensers and implement the first projects in Kenya. This was followed in 2013 by the Pumpinski Global Partnership Unit (GPU), created specifically to form partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and funders alike in order to set up projects. The two GPU staff, who both had a background in working with NGOs and development organizations, actively tried to engage major Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) NGOs, philanthropic foundations, bilateral development organizations, and organizations such as the World Bank to serve as implementers, as well as funders for water-related projects that include Pumpinski products. I want to briefly hint at Pumpinski's most important activities and partners surrounding the implementation of PAYGo water dispensers.

One of Pumpinski's major partners is the US NGO Planetary View (PV), one of the biggest NGOs in the WASH sector. The two organizations signed an agreement in 2014 to provide clean water to 2 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. As of October 2020, 2.4 million people had been reached (Pumpinski 2020). Since PV also installs Pumpinski submersible solar pumps, it is hard to know precisely how many people are served by PAYGo water dispensers. In Kenya, 80 PAYGo water dispensers were implemented by Pumpinski and PV in projects funded mainly by the Rock Foundation and USAID, reaching about 40,000 people in total.