Social impacts of dams: Learning from lived experiences of Maphilingo community, Eswatini

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) highlights the crucial issues of social impacts of dams on local communities and emphasises that these have been neglected in the quest for eradicating poverty through infrastructure development. The broader questions of equity, community engagement and learning and others remain important in community development. This study builds on existing knowledge to assess learning from the social impacts of Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP). A primary research was conducted in the Maphilingo Community Eswatini, which is in a rural setting. This article employs a qualitative approach to assess the learning resulting from the lived experiences of the Maphilingo community regarding the LUSIP project, using 32 semi-structured interviews, document review and observation. The community experienced positive and negative social impacts of the dam. Benefits were few and inequitable. Project spin-offs were minimal. Hence, community engagement was not meaningful, resulting in nominal learning opportunities. Communities normally learn considerable skills while working in project spin-offs like piggeries, that usual accompany dam projects. Hence, dam proponents should bring more project spin-offs, to optimise benefits and learning opportunities. Transdisciplinary contribution: This study utilises the social engagement school of thought for transdisciplinary research, merging development studies and pedagogical approaches. It integrates the WCD Framework and the Transformative Learning Theory (TLT) to form its conceptual basis, aiming to capture community experiences and learning from these experiences. Keywords: dam; local communities; lived experiences; Transformative Learning; Eswatini; LUSIP.