ABSTRACT
This chapter is about power, and the capacity of women to develop water supplies despite their apparent powerlessness. It looks at the history of women’s involvement in producing water supplies during the twentieth century. This is divided into four sections: the pre-colonial period, the colonial period, the early post-colonial period and the present. Emphasis is placed on rural and small-town water supplies. The production of water is a historical and geographical process that weaves together physical changes and changing ideas. Before water ever enters a pipe network and becomes an engineered product it is already a produced social substance. Anglophone Cameroon comprises the North-West and South-West, two of Cameroon’s ten provinces. The South-West has very high rainfall (more than 3,000 mm/year) and the North-West has marginally less, but is higher in altitude. In general both provinces have high relief and are well watered, enabling most water supplies to be provided by gravity from springs.
