Sustainable water resource development remains elusive because development has largely externalized costs to the environment and vulnerable people. There is a need for novel research theory, methodologies & practice in order to meet the UN SDGs and realise the Africa Water Vision 2025. We propose to launch an innovative research approach: the Adaptive Systemic Approach (ASA). Our aim is to apply transformative, transdisciplinary, community-engaged research, to shift water development outcomes towards achieving the SDGs. We focus on continental water development priorities: water supply and pollution. This collaboration brings together the ARUA Water Centre of Excellence (CoE) and UK partner, the University of Sheffield (UoS). The 8 CoE nodes are: i) Addis Ababa U, Ethiopia; U Rwanda, Rwanda; U Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal; Dar es Salaam U, Tanzania, Makerere U, Uganda (DAC least developed); ii) U Lagos, Nigeria (DAC lower-middle income); and iii) U Cape Town, Rhodes U (CoE Hub), South Africa (DAC upper-middle income). We propose a country-based Case Study structure to support local research development and pathways to local impact (Figure 1 in Case for Support). We use an SDG6 (water and sanitation) centred model, that links SDGs related to landscape water resources with SDGs related to water services. (This model underpins the successful UKRI:GCRF Capability Grant:"Water for African SDGs"). We raise three research questions (RQ) related to water development priorities. Three catchment-based Case Studies address RQ1: HOW IS WATER USED, TO WHOSE BENEFIT? (Rufigi R Tanzania, Senegal R Senegal, and Blue Nile R Ethiopia). Two Case Studies focus on urban water pollution (Kampala City Uganda and Lagos City Nigeria), addressing RQ2: WHAT ARE THE SOURCES, PATHWAYS AND IMPACT OF POLLUTION IN URBAN WATER SYSTEMS? A cross-cutting Case Study addresses water resource protection and biodiversity in all CSs, and a biodiversity site in Rwanda. By the completion of the project we commit to leaving local people effectively linked with institutions making decisions about water that affect them. Therefore all Case Studies address the question RQ3: HOW CAN LOCAL CAPACITY TO ENGAGE IN PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE BE DEVELOPED FOR: I) EQUITABLE WATER SHARING, II) COMMUNITY POLLUTION RESILIENCE, AND III) ECOSYSTEM PROTECTION AND RESTORATION? The novel Adaptive Systemic Approach (ASA) provides a coherent methodological framework that will support Case Study comparisons, changed water development practice, and will embed pathways to impact throughout the project. The ASA requires engaged research, and draws on three core theoretical concepts, with associated methods: Complex Social-Ecological Systems, Transdisciplinarity, and Transformative Social Learning (Elaborated in Case for Support). These concepts underpin four ASA steps, followed in each Case Study: 1. BOUND: Researchers engage with a full range of stakeholders to identify a relevant, local, water-development issue, and scope the Case Study. 2. ADAPTIVE PLANNING PROCESS: Stakeholders co-create a contextually informed vision of the future state of their selected local issue, and co-develop an objectives hierarchy to move towards resolving the issue. 3. CONCURRENT ACTIVITIES 3.1 RESEARCH Each Case study team addresses the specific research questions, delivering data for resolving the problem. 3.2 PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE DEVELOPMENT Local people, formal, and traditional, water governance institutions together move towards local people being part of land and water decision-making. 3.3 STRATEGIC ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT (SAM) - stakeholders will be trained in a process for systemic, responsive, contextual, co-management. 4. PARTICIPATORY MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF REFLEXIVE LEARNING Researchers and stakeholders co-develop indicators, co-monitor, co-reflect on progress, co-learn and adapt, using SAM. Following the ASA in the case studies embeds the theory of change, and the pathways to impact.

A safe and functioning transport system is vital to maintain economic activities in countries, developing or not. In most developing countries, the transport system is characterised by a crowded bus transit and micro-transit systems, supplemented by paratransits such as motorcycle taxis and autorickshaws. The paratransit sector is also a large source of employment (e.g. 3 Million motorcycle taxis in Nigeria, 300,000 in Kampala, Uganda, 104,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh). The COVID19 pandemic has massively disrupted the transport sector and economic activities. In the project countries, motorcycle-based paratransits are banned from operating in order to maintain safe distances. In addition to disrupting travel and affecting the primarily poor users (prices in other modes have gone up), this has also resulted in massive unemployment and poverty among the drivers. However, there are also serious concerns about the safety of passengers in crowded buses or micro-transit vehicles, where maintaining appropriate distances are nearly impossible, and paratransits can be a viable alternative. The risks of virus exposure is also high in high occupancy vehicles due to the closed nature of the vehicles compared to the open nature of motorcycles and semi-open nature of autorickshaws. It may also be possible to mitigate risks in paratransits through barriers or shields. However, there are no studies investigating the relative risks of these modes, with or without the mitigation measures. The project aims to model the exposure risk in different types of transport modes in order to allow policymakers to make an evidence-based optimum decision. The physics-based computer modelling will be accompanied by user surveys to understand their travel pattern, preferences and acceptance of various mitigation measures (such as shields designed using the models). Given the prevalence of micro-and paratransits in many other DAC countries, the results will be useful for other similar DAC countries too.

Air quality in most East African cities has declined dramatically over the last decades and it air pollution is now the leading environmental risk factor for human health. There is a critical lack of data to assess air quality in East Africa, and therefore to quantify its effect upon human health. Air quality networks in East Africa are still in their early days, with the long term and systematic measurement of air pollutants only available at less than a handful of sites. Large spatial and temporal gaps in data exist. From a historical perspective, very little is known of air pollution concentrations before 2010. The lack of historical data makes it extremely difficult to assess the deleterious effects of air pollution upon human health. It also poses challenges for assessing the efficacy of air quality interventions. Hence informed decisions about infrastructure, which take air quality into account are difficult to make. This proposal forms a new network to co-create strategy and protocols to bring together data that relate to air pollution in East African Urban areas. It targets the capitals of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Kenya (Nairobi) and Uganda (Kampala). New data science techniques will be developed to synthesize disparate data streams into spatially and temporally coherent outputs, which can be used to understand historic, contemporary and future air quality. The proposal will provide a road map to harness the power of new data analytics and big data technologies. To design this roadmap, three high intensity workshops and interspersed virtual meetings will be undertaken in Stage 1. Each workshop will tackle a key knowledge gap or development challenge: - Workshop 1: Parameterizing the data problem in East Africa for assessing the causes and effects of air pollution (Kampala) - Workshop 2: Big data approaches to improve East Africa air quality prediction (Addis Ababa) - Workshop 3: Creating greater capacity and capability in analytic air quality science (Nairobi) The Stage 1 research outcomes will enable the development of tailored mitigation strategies for improving air quality. The methodologies developed in the proposal will be translatable and scalable throughout urban East Africa. Hence, the proposal will help realise multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs), including SDG3: Good health and well-being, SDG11: Sustainable cities and communities, and SDG17: Partnerships for the goals. To ensure the project reaches its maximum potential, it includes an extensive array of research translation activities: workshops with academic and non-academic stakeholders; a professionally designed website, which will hold both academic and non-academic outputs including open source academic papers and presentations; briefing notes directed at a range of external stakeholders, including top down governance and bottom up grassroots organizations. Project partners from business, academia, governance and public engagement with science are involved and will attend the workshops. They are Uber, Amazon Web Services, PA Consulting, Kampala Capital City Authority, African Population Health Research Centre, Birmingham Open Media, GCRF Multi-Hazard Urban Disaster Risk Transitions Hub, and the Alan Turing Institute. They offer an additional £102,951 of in-kind contributions to the project. Their incorporation widens the available skillsets and will help deliver long-term impact in the East African region.

Adequate public water services are not provided in, or expanded to, informal unplanned urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Explanations in the literature range from technical difficulties, weak institutional settings, and poor cadastral information. Also, urban poor tend to lack the political or economic resources to exercise power within the urban arena to change their situation; rather, they are subject to commercialisation, industrialisation and 'full cost recovery' for water access. In such cases, groundwater is turned to as an alternative, mainly through private vendors, self-supply from own or shared wells, and/or NGO-run kiosks. However, groundwater of good and safe quality is scarce, either seasonally or at different locations throughout the urban area. Also, there is very little insight in the hydrologic cycle within the urban area, including surface water and groundwater flow patterns and interactions, associated transport velocities, dynamics of pollutant transport, and the presence of recharge and discharge areas in the urban area. Therefore, it is unknown if and how long natural groundwater reserves can sustain these increasing urban groundwater demands. Social, institutional, financial and environmental conditions make the dependence of urban poor on groundwater a challenge that may lead to reduction of the quality of living, income, and life expectancy of the urban poor. It can therefore be regarded a complex and persistent societal problem, which is highly uncertain in terms of future developments and hard to manage, since it is rooted in different societal domains. Also, these problems seem impossible to solve with traditional approaches and instruments or through existing institutions. What is lacking is information, integration, coherence, and systemic thinking. The solution to the problem is likewise complex and not straight-forward; it will involve different stakeholders, it requires social learning, and arriving at the solution is uncertain and will take a long time. Hosted by Local Transitioning Teams, and focusing on parts of Kampala (Uganda), Arusha (Tanzania), and Accra (Ghana), as examples of growing mixed urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, including poor people in slums, who depend on groundwater, T-GroUP will first firmly root itself in cutting edge demand-led interdisciplinary social and natural research. What are current and historic multi-scale groundwater use-regimes and multi-level governance arrangements, how were and are power structures and power dynamics present in these areas, and what is how do financial and economic factors come into play? These are the more social, governance, institutional and socio-economic type of question we ask ourselves. From the environmental and natural sciences point of view, we aim to unravel complex urban groundwater flow systems and patterns in pathogen distributions in aquifers using next generation DNA sequencing techniques and qPCR techniques we recently developed. Then, our project will turn into a socio-biophysical transition experiment. These areas described above become Urban Transitioning Laboratories in which we plan to implement a Transition Management Cycle (TMC), which is able to properly deal with the complex societal problem described above, and which can convert unsustainable water use into inclusive urban groundwater management, thereby focusing on the role and the needs of the urban poor. Key components of the TMC include multi-stakeholder platforms ('Learning Alliances'), strategic planning, and small scale demonstrations to show the promise in making the transition towards sustainable groundwater management. Being designed for development impact, the TMC is also subject of research: departing from a TMC we developed earlier, we aim to arrive at a TMC tailored to groundwater use in the complex context of our study areas, which can be replicated in other cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.