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Central to this dissertation is a critique of developmentalist approaches in water and sanitation (WASH) research, and an argument that understanding everyday practices is necessary both theoretically and pragmatically for successful improvements in urban infrastructure. In the past decades social science scholarship has raised attention to the problematic of prevalent technocratic approaches in the WASH sector. As scholars have criticised, interventions to improve access to water have often been based on technological, governance and behavioural approaches and the use of universalised understandings of WASH challenges that do not reflect the everyday realities of the poor and marginalised residents framed as beneficiaries of water and sanitation projects (Li, 2007; Mehta and Movik, 2014; Simon et al., 2011). The call to take seriously the everyday realities of global South urban residents has also been made by urban scholars working 'from' the global South concerned with the uncritical application of universal explanations to global South cities (Kooy and Bakker, 2008; Lawhon et al., 2018; Silver, 2014). As these scholars have demonstrated the lens of the everyday is a helpful analytical device to challenge notions of urban infrastructures that do not reflect the realities at play in global South cities. Building on this scholarship, this dissertation aims to extend the understanding of water and sanitation access challenges in Lilongwe, Malawi through a detailed empirical exploration of the everydayness of Lilongwe's infrastructures. Specifically, the dissertation develops four themes i) the history and use of a dual sanitation system; ii) the socio-materialities of menstrual waste management; iv) the operation of the water kiosk system; iv) and the experiences of living with fragile sanitation infrastructures. The selection of these themes, and the academic literature mobilised to explore them, responds to the commitment to contribute to empirically driven theory making. For that purpose, the research adopted an inductive method to allow for the iterative zigzagging between theory and data. Data collection entailed participant observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussions, mobile-methods, and photo elicitation exercises with residents and different actors of the water and sanitation sectors. This data was supplemented with the review and analysis of urban plans, project documents, and other literature about Lilongwe's sanitation sector gathered through archival and desk-based research as well as secondary data analysis. The dissertation shows the multiple instances in which access to water and sanitation is challenged by failing infrastructures and reveals the historical legacies, social power relations, and cultural dynamics underpinning these failures. Intellectually, the dissertation contributes to scholarship theorising infrastructures from the global South by reflecting on the unequal experiences of failure across heterogeneous infrastructural landscape and intersecting social identities; the (intersectionally gendered) labours that keep infrastructures at work; and the locally grounded practices and solutions developed by residents to address different infrastructure failures. From a policy and practice perspective the findings call for making visible, and accounting for, water and sanitation failures as well as the labours and practices required to sustain access to water and sanitation. The dissertation suggests this can be achieved by reframing access beyond absolute presence/absence of infrastructures; integrating locally grounded solutions into governance structures; recognising the role infrastructural labours play in access; and considering the indirect harms produced by failing infrastructures.