CO-CONSTITUTING COST-RECOVERY, ASSEMBLING BENEVOLENCE – THE TECHNO-POLITICALPATTERNING OF AUTOMATIC WATER DISPENSERS

4 pagesConcerned about “providing reliable and sustainable water supply in the developing world,” a multinational water pump manufacturing company identified the inability to: collect and manage revenue, reduce “non-revenue-water” and lack of money for service and maintenance as the main challenges for “sustainable water supply” in the Global South. To provide a solution to these supposed problems, the company developed “automatic water dispensers”. The dispensers are meant to replace kiosk attendants in already existing water kiosks in “slums” and rural areas. The dispenser can be described as a foursquare unit with a display, an integrated touch screen and a slot on the front side for the blue customer cards that come with the dispenser. Above the slot, the display shows the balanceon the card, the amount of the water fetched, and the price per litre. According to the product brochure, the prepayment feature that is integrated in the water cards shall “remove uncertainty in revenue collection”. Combined with an internet connected water management system (WMS), the dispensers promise to improve the efficiency of the respective tap water system by facilitating transparent revenue collection. Through these features the water system promises to become sustainable and respectively costcovering. In the cartoon-like promotion film of the dispenser, theprotagonist – a person labelled “water provider” – will by the end of the video have transformed into a “water manger”