Introduction: Urbanisation and access to drinking water in Africa
The scale of the urban demographic phenomenon in Africa
In overall terms, urbanisation is a recent phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa: approximately 15% of the population lived in cities in 1960 and 30% in 1990; (for the same years in industrialised countries the figures were 61% and 73% respectively). Since countries have acquired independence, the rate of urbanisation has been dramatic and it continues to be so.
Some figures on the towns and cities studied under the programme steered by pS-Eau:
This urbanisation is characterised by the extreme disparity between sprawling capital cities (approaching or exceeding a million inhabitants) and a network of significantly smaller towns (with some tens of thousands of inhabitants, at most a hundred thousand). It is also characterised by the high proportion of spontaneous and illegal housing, the low population density of urbanised spaces and their great heterogeneity. Around a city centre identifiable by infrastructures dating back to its colonial past, suburbs spread out in the form of low-built housing, often interspersed with wide natural or market-gardening areas, or sometimes insalubrious seasonal marshes or lakes. The low population density of these urban forms partly explains why it is difficult to supply them with collective services. However, this mixture of life styles, urban and rural, in the same area, makes it easier for its disinherited populations to survive.
More figures from the programme illustrate Africa's urban sprawl:
Apart from the demographic shift in capital and medium-sized cities, the other important phenomenon is the demographic change in rural areas towards an increasing number of semi-rural towns (2,000 to 20,000 inhabitants). Here, there is a gradual shift from rural behavioural patterns to more urban behaviour in terms of the demand for a drinking water service. A prospecting study in western Burkina Faso, for example, shows that the number of semi-rural towns (already 200, with virtually no mini-piped water supplies today) could increase by 50% over the next ten years.
A brief history of municipal control of drinking water services
It is interesting to consider parallel changes in municipal control of drinking water services (cf. Collignon, RA 9).
Between 1950 and 1970, when a number of African cities where beginning to grow, municipalities first played a direct part in water distribution (municipal control) and were responsible for operating the network and billing the subscribers. Subsequently, faced with chronic deficits, most municipalities sub-contracted water services to a national public enterprise, whilst retaining in most countries the management of standposts, thanks to which they provided a minimal, but free public service, intended for the poorest sections of the population. Financially, these were covered by collecting municipal taxes.
For the past ten years or so, municipalities have been abandoning the direct operation of standposts, since their low levels of fiscal income no longer enable them to pay for the "standpost service". They are therefore allowing concessionaire companies to gradually close down public standposts.
In most countries (such as Mali, Senegal, Mauritania,) some standposts have been reopened and conceded to private managers. Municipalities currently play practically no further role, not even in setting tariffs or planning infrastructures.
The gap between access to drinking water and urban populations
The proportion of urban households connected to a drinking water network varies widely between cities. It is, however, highly inadequate everywhere today: 17% in Port-au-Prince, 25% in Nouakchott, 54% in Dakar. But above all, it is sometimes overtaken by urban growth: for example, in 1976, 80% of the population of Yaoundé was supplied by Snec (including 56% through standposts), compared with 64% in 1994, including 10% through standposts (cf. Adeline, PA 1).
The facts, the challenge
The urban demographic figures clearly show the challenge facing Africa: from an essentially rural civilisation at the time of their independence, they now face urban concentrations which are rapidly catching up with world metropolises. With an overall rate of urban growth estimated at 5%, long-term forecast studies for West Africa state that the present 80 million urban dwellers will reach approximately 250 million over the next twenty-five years.
This represents an unprecedented pace of change within a single generation, which has had to learn a vast amount, and the next generation is facing same prospect...
The history of Africa's municipal control of water distribution and its gradual disappearance, and the deficiencies of the current insufficient levels of supply (which will probably worsen) provided by public water companies reflects not so much the failure of these management systems as their limitations in being able to match or catch up with the demographic growth of African cities. And quite clearly, this is even less likely to occur now. Are these limitations not simply those of centralised systems for decision-making, investment and management in responding to the African urban challenge, i.e. systems centralised at municipal level, or worse still, at national level?
Attempted responses to the new water access needs of urban populations
We can list at least four responses, very different in origin, to the water access needs generated by continually growing urban populations:
Responses attempted by the public authorities
Here we consider only one of the forms of response of public authorities, that which relates to their overall policies. In practically all the countries, national drinking water supply policies are being revised with a view to making populations more responsible for financing water services, and with a view to increasing the number of actors in the provision of new services (e.g. by delegating some of the water service functions to be fulfilled).
One of the major features of these current revisions, however, which is universally apparent in all the countries, is the paradox between these new water policies and the politics of decentralisation, which is also currently occurring practically everywhere (cf. Etienne, RA 2). This paradox is currently blurring the lines of responsibility of municipalities in a great many countries (cf. the Ségou seminar, PA 5), and the reasons for these situations, and for the obstacles they create, merit discussion.
Responses tried in the field by various kinds of organisations (notably community-based or charities)
The programme steered by pS-Eau has identified various structures for drinking water supply projects (initiatives on the part of individuals, neighbourhood associations or local development committees, NGOs, religious bodies, or State initiatives with responsibility for the management of built structures with the communities, etc.)
Analysing these in the actual case of Cameroon (cf. Tanawa, RA 8) has shown that these perform very unequally in the design of the project and of built structures (technical studies), in the way in which they mobilise investment funds (from funders or from the beneficiaries), in the quality of realisation of the built structures, and in managing these (involvement of the population, mobilising contributions, transparency in management of funds, arbitrating between conflicting parties).
Responses explored by private, mostly informal operators
Several programme activities studied private operators in detail: the form they taken, their scope and what drives them. In economic significance alone, in the cities studied in detail in the programme (cf. Collignon, RA 9), private operators today account for between 21 and 84% of the added value of the water production and distribution chain, despite being for the most part in the informal sector.
"Make-shift" responses from the people themselves: the complementary nature of various forms of access to water
Confronted by a severe lack of organised services (public or private) to meet all of their various needs for water, in cities with the good fortune to enjoy adequate rainfall and hydrology, urban populations have spontaneously made use of all the water resources available: rivers, wells, springs, etc.
Several of the programme activities highlighted the fact that people did not use the various resources available to them at random, but demonstrated real individual strategies, in economic, health, and cultural terms, in using these resources in a complementary manner (cf. Bouju, RA 10 – Adeline, PA 1 – Romann, RA 1).
A general observation on these responses: the lack of city-wide consistency
There are still very few responses which involve national and local actors in a consistent, imaginative and determined manner. The programme identified attempts currently being developed in Senegal. By contrast, generally speaking, most of the programme activities revealed the absence of any global vision of the problems of water and sanitation in a city, and the absence of any global vision in the activities being undertaken in these fields in any given city.
Some activities analysed the harmful effects of this lack of a forum for consistent action, and called for greater involvement on the part of municipal leaders. In particular, the lack of links between local water collection point committees and municipal leaders, and between urban plans and projects being set up in the urban water sector were sometimes identified.
Some activities attempted to lay the foundations for local governance in water and sanitation (cf. Estienne, PA 2 – The network of three towns in Mali, PA 5 – de Boismenu, PA 6).
On what can local contracting and local regulation be based?
The possible roles of local contracting bodies and municipalities
Centralised methods of decision-making, investment and management of urban public services have shown their limitations in matching the demographic and spatial growth of African cities, but the emergence of decentralised and delocalised methods poses different problems, often of a new kind, which need to be well understood and mastered.
The contracting body is the individual or institutional body which expresses the intention to build a structure, explains its requirements, in terms of objectives and constraints, and chooses and sub-contracts the structure to others. At local level, municipalities, but also water collection point management committees can be genuine contracting bodies for projects, for which they assume the entire responsibility vis à vis the community and all the partners involved in its realisations. This is then referred to as local contracting (cf. Estienne, PA 2).
Such transfers of authority, accompanied by their own resources, i.e. either adequate financial means, or capacities to control these financial resources, represent new challenges for networks of local power and networks of patronage (cf. Bouju, RA 10).
In addition, although decentralisation processes aim to bring an end to the monopoly of skills at national level, the intention is not for this to be recreated at municipal level: municipalities are expected to take account of the emergence of other actors (the private sector, civil society, community institutions, aid and development institutions, etc.) which they should engage in a joint approach, within a clearly defined institutional framework and with legal tools for clarification and for formalising the drawing up of contracts (cf. the Ségou seminar, PA 5).
Public space, public service, common forms of solidarity and individual benefits
The recent history of African countries and of their international context, notably with interference from international institutions and funders, has resulted in an unstable environment for the emergence of local public responsibilities and local contracting bodies, which can be characterised as follows (cf. Bouju, RA 10):
The challenge and the main difficulty is to encourage a " local public space" to emerge, i.e. a space shared by all to the advantage of all, and outside the private and narrowly community-based reasoning which currently prevails.
Learning to regulate between social actors: using contractualisation as a tool
The need to find solutions capable of changing was highlighted both from a technical and an economic point of view, and this need is just as great in terms of institutional and organisational aspects. The aim is to gradually build up real local operators, public or private, with professional skills. What contractualisation brings to local water services in Africa is not maintaining the balance of a system, but creating one. It represents the development, and the joint and gradual invention of a framework and a management tool for urban services, and universally recognised rules of the game. At the same time it forms social actors capable of playing their part. The contract should form part of a dynamic learning process, gradually adapting not only to changing situations, but above all to the new positions in which actors place themselves as they increasingly understand their role and what is at stake.
It is probably not therefore a question of knowing first if the municipality can or should assume responsibility for the management of installations, but of helping it to build up its primary responsibility, that of ensuring the service and respect for the negotiated rules of the game. This can lead to local quasi-contracts, multi-partnerships, the real nature of which is not so much legal as political, and which then enable more specific and precise contracts to be drawn up (cf. Coing, RA 2).
Financial considerations of local control
The contracting body is generally responsible for the financial structure of the investment, and may even partly finance built structures, and it must ensure the preservation of these structures by checking that they are being correctly used and maintained.
When considering the sustainability of installations and water services, the sharing of roles to enable the water service to function correctly and above all a clear division of costs are key factors.
With the transfer of responsibilities and control from the State to local level, this sharing of roles and responsibilities has completely changed and is currently very far from being clear or stabilised. Notably, the question of who owns water production and distribution installations is rarely resolved without a struggle. As a result, although some things are certain where sharing of certain costs is concerned, there are still uncertainties over covering "intermediate" costs (renewing equipment, significant extensions, etc.) And can we be sure that each actor, in addition to his position in relation to the operation of the whole system, is capable of meeting the costs he is expected to cover?
This is the focus of a discussion led on "who does what, who pays for what, who can afford what?" (cf. Conan, RA 2).
Encouraging an awareness of urban consistency to emerge
The water cycle and urban development: the need for a comprehensive understanding of water issues throughout urban areas
Municipal decision-makers and inhabitants rarely know about the hydrology and the hydro-geology of a site being urbanised; even urbanisation and upgrading experts sometimes know little about these. And yet, the subsequent interactions between water cycles and the conditions of daily life for urban populations are considerable: whether they will have a supply of water (not necessarily drinking water), water pollution and health risks, flooding and the risk of certain areas being cut off, etc.
A comprehensive understanding of water issues throughout urban areas includes knowledge of both a scientific nature (quantity and quality of the water available, the nature of water run-off) and of a socio-economic nature (how water is perceived and used, by the people and for economic activities). Several programme activities have prepared the ground for acquiring this comprehensive understanding (cf. Romann, RA 1 – Adeline, PA 1 – Tanawa, RA 8 – de Boismenu, PA 6).
Mapping all the information gradually obtained about a town or city is also a major advantage, making it easier to transmit knowledge and messages. One of the activities even tested the impact of this mapped data on the awareness of local authorities. Others went on to complement water cycle data with quality measurements (the quality of the mains drinking water and of water from alternative supplies such as springs and wells).
The impact of this comprehensive knowledge on the behaviour of local actors
The programme activities mentioned above have above all shown the considerable impact this comprehensive, rigorous and detailed understanding - which was been widely disseminated amongst populations groups and the various sections making up civil society, as well as amongst local decision-makers and funders - could have on altering people's behaviour both with regard to water resources and to their responsibilities.
A particularly dynamic process of dialogue in a Cameroon town was based on, and launched by this kind of comprehensive knowledge (cf. de Boismenu, PA 6).
It is also – once finally acquired and accurately fed back - in some cases calling into question projects currently at the preparation stage. Thanks to such knowledge, external aid (decentralised co-operation for example) can be better (and more) mobilised, by providing a well-founded argument on which to base their contribution (cf. Romann, RA 1).
Debates have often arisen in connection with the knowledge acquired on the quality of water from various sources, debates on the relevance of spreading such knowledge too widely and on its uncontrollable impact on population groups (cf. Tanawa, RA 8).
Operational tools to improve local actors' knowledge and know-how
Any response to the challenge of urban growth and to the limitations of centralised and uniform responses (connecting households to a public water distribution network), inevitably means diversifying responses of all kinds: technical, financial, institutional and organisational.
To do this, we need to restore the balance of our technical understanding of all the technologies available (improving standposts, improving springs, improving the upgrading and the use of wells, etc.); we need to restore the balance of the knowledge and know-how of new local operators in the water sector (emerging local contracting bodies, informal private operators, etc.)
The pS-Eau steered programme paved the way for at least three ways of restoring this balance:
The function of standposts in an overall approach to providing urban population groups with access to drinking water
Standposts can play a considerable part in providing urban populations groups with access to drinking water (46% in Dakar, an estimated 75% of the population served by EDM's networks in Mali). Several programme activities have, however, highlighted the absence in certain countries of specific or adequate procedures for the particular subscriber operating a standpost (cf. Romann, RA 1 – Ségou seminar, PA 5).
When a specific contractual statute has been introduced, as in Niger, it still requires much improvement in the way in which new standposts are introduced and allocated, their technical design and the way in which they are kept clean, their financial management and billing, their monitoring and management follow-up, etc.
Without taking on either the investment, or their direct management, municipalities could recover an important role of mediation and improving procedures between the private managers of standposts and the concessionaire company of the drinking water supply (cf. Municipality of Ségou, PA 5).
Technical skills to improve access to alternative water resources to the centralised network, and how to protect these
In surveys on people's water supply practices, one programme activity identified seven types of access: upgraded public springs, upgraded private springs, non-upgraded springs, upgraded public wells, upgraded private wells, public standposts charging for water, and private standposts (cf. Tanawa, PA 8).
Protecting water resources is vital to alternative ways of accessing water. This programme activity therefore specifically considered and suggests a protection strategy resting on two forms of activity: firstly the choice of sites and defining protection boundaries, and secondly upgrading the actual built structures.
In order to identify the various forms of improvement they required, the programme activity divided structures into three types: upgraded, summarily upgraded and non-upgraded. Another activity then studied in detail the technical skills for improving these structures (cf. Adeline, PA 1).
These new skills can moreover provide an opportunity for allowing a local industry for contracting and implementing such improvements to emerge (cf. Romann, RA 1).
New forms of activity and support for local emergent contracting bodies: the increasing power of social contractors
If the principle contractors in the field of water supply for urban populations are to shift from State level to local or municipal level, this means real changes in behaviour at all levels. Such changes can be accelerated by a certain number of measures taking place simultaneously (education, training, advice and assistance, etc.)
To stress the extent to which these simultaneous activities are no longer at all secondary, but on the contrary are sometimes central, some professionals have given them the generic name of "social contracting".
Specific education and training tools intended for local actors. The emergence of a market for advice and assistance and of social contracting
Two of the programme's pilot activities specifically aimed to turn local actors into main contractors: one involved neighbourhood associations in peri-urban areas, the other management committees in small urban centres (cf. Adeline, PA 1 – Estienne, PA 2). They draw extremely rich and promising conclusions from the real-life experience of the education and training required by these new local actors.
On the eve of major reforms in national policies on supplying drinking water to populations, a potential market is beginning to emerge for local consultancies advising future contractors, i.e. water collection point management committees, water service user associations, and municipalities.
The pilot activities of the programme, however, highlighted the alarming absence of local service providers in the field of water services management, including training and technical advice and assistance, training and advice and assistance in financial and organisational management, etc. For local skills to develop and local water services to be sustainable, the skills acquired in social contracting must be transferred to nationals (cf. Estienne, PA 2).
Changes in State de-concentrated services: from direct contracting to assisting local contracting
Debates on the inadequacies of African municipalities in playing their present or future role as contractors and local regulators in the field of water have shed light on the inadequacies inherent in de-concentrated State services, which generally have the best technical skills.
In the dual context of the decentralisation and the privatisation of certain urban services, including drinking water services, the State is abandoning a certain number of its prerogatives. In the water sector, where the socio-political stakes are high, national civil servants often regard this as a loss of power being imposed upon them.
In fact, these national departments can also expect to find themselves on a real learning curve in the politics of forthcoming decentralisation, in terms of technical assistance and transferring skills and know-how. This means adjusting central administrative bodies by handing the initiative to local actors and working to strengthen the latter's ability to take initiatives and action. A shift in this direction does seem to be underway in some countries, such as Mali or Burkina Faso (cf. Ségou seminar, PA 5).
Dialogue and co-ordination around local contractors, yet to be created or strengthened
Practically all the programme's activities highlighted the dramatic lack of co-ordination and dialogue between actors concerned or involved in the urban drinking water sector, without, however, suggesting possible ways in which these could be launched and made operational.
Some promising leads have been uncovered in the course of discussions conducted between three Malian towns, on how to exploit their past and mixed experience of dialogue and around a new concept of joint strategic planning (cf. Ségou seminar, PA 5).
Taken together, basic studies and strategic choices can be used to draw up an overall diagrammatic plan for universal, decent access to drinking water on a city-scale. Such a plan, however, will be followed only if it has been understood and accepted by all involved. To make this easier, information and training activities can be suggested. But it is the process of dialogue conducted throughout the planning stage which proves most effective.
Throughout the world, experience shows that a master plan without broad consultation has little chance of being effective, as it is appropriated and defended by very few local actors. Conversely, consultation which does rest on a strong leading idea and a structured approach runs the risk of getting dangerously out of hand verbally, and of hardening conflicts. Both foundation stones have be laid simultaneously: structured consultation around a strategic planning process (also known as orientation planning).
Apart from being a management tool, strategic planning is first and foremost a tool for teaching, information, and joint discussion. Drawing up a strategic plan should provide the opportunity for a great deal of consultation and many discussion (often stormy to start with) between all who are involved in water and sanitation issues within the conglomeration.
Only one of the programme's pilot activities explicitly cleared the way for consultation on the scale of a major city: at present, this is still in the preliminary stage of collecting basic information and disseminating this widely at the first public events stressing the joint benefits. But already, this new form of activity has excited considerable interest and enthusiasm (cf. de Boismenu, PA 6).
Setting up specific projects to advise and assist local contractors
If we assume that the State will really withdraw from this field, can water services be fully ensured by user associations in small urban centres? One of the programme's pilot activities offered training (in community management, accounting and financial management, servicing and maintenance) and an advisory and assistance service, but no financial support for operating, maintaining, renewing or extending networks. The whole project consisted in educating, training and monitoring management committees, and this enabled it to design and validate simple management tools, education packages and adaptable training modules, which are likely to be widely distributed (cf. Estienne, PA 2).
The success of this pilot activity and its conclusions show that it is now extremely relevant for funders to set up specific projects of assistance to local contractors, without necessarily intending to invest in infrastructure.
This form of assistance to social contractors only seems poised to play a considerable role in accelerating changing practices in supplying drinking water in small urban centres and peri-urban areas.
Providing universal decent access to drinking water: an opportunity to improve local governance
Creating fresh links between new water supply dynamics and those of decentralisation, and paving the way for markers for municipal managers
It is perhaps not by chance that there is currently a paradox between national policies on drinking water supply which are being revised, and decentralisation policies which are being elaborated. This may simply illustrate the conceptual difficulties national decision-makers have in finding "markers" for municipal action with a view to providing decent access to water for all.
Can we interpret the few attempts to approach these issues in a global perspective highlighted by the programme as indicating future concrete concerns in implementing decentralisation in African cities?
How can these indications be followed up and exploited to ensure that ideas and lessons learnt are not forgotten, and how can exchanges and training for municipal staff be arranged so that they can avoid each other's mistakes and learn from the tools which have been tried and tested by others? (cf. Ségou seminar, PA 5)
An opportunity for decentralised co-operation
The programme steered by pS-Eau has provided the opportunity to highlight the potentials and weaknesses of decentralised aid in the field of water, a favourite area for support on the part of communes of the North for their twin towns in Africa. The weaknesses often lie in identifying the demand, under-estimating the pre-project studies required, and insufficient integration of assistance being provided on a city-wide scale with the inter-linked sectors of water, sanitation, health and education.
Given what we have stated above on foundations to be laid for local contracting or local regulation, on the "local public space" which is often still to be created, should the local authorities of the North not focus on providing methodological assistance to their partner communes in the South, rather that fulfilling the role of delegated contractor?
At this still embryonic stage of decentralisation, elected municipal representatives and even more municipal staff, above all need help in learning their "craft" in urban management and in the basic management to achieve this.
This is where partners of the North can excel. They could also supplement the lack of skills in central African administrations in taking on this role (cf. Morel à l'Huissier, PA 5).
New approaches from funders to setting up water distribution projects in urban areas
It is time to inject the urban dimension (in the sense of comprehensive urban consistency, discussed above) and the municipal and local dimension (in the sense of responsibility for local contracting, discussed above) into water supply programmes for urban population groups. It is time to improve "all" the complementary opportunities enabling water to be supplied to continuously growing urban populations i.e. to exploit the technical complementarity of water supply sources and distribution methods, and the organisational complementarity of public and private actors. It is time to give African states and local actors the ways and means of ensuring behavioural change at all levels, and above all at the most local levels, which are vital for the shift from centralised traditional responses to new decentralised and de-localised responses to occur, the latter being the only ones at present capable of one day matching the urban demographic explosion.
The programme steered by pS-Eau has opened up a large number of avenues for debate and above all for behavioural experimentation in these directions. To validate the first avenues opened up and to suggest how these messages can be disseminated and lessons multiplied amongst those shaping and deciding national policies in Africa, and amongst their funders, further debate is required.
In particular, certain aspects of the programme should enable objectives for future assistance to the urban drinking water sector in Africa to be reformulated and to establish terms of reference for preparatory studies which better reflect new demands, such as social contracting and a comprehensive urban vision.
Reports relating to this summary
ADELINE T. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AP 1.
DE BOISMENU I. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AP 6.
DE BOISMENU I. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 5.
BOUJU J. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 10.
COLLIGNON B. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 9.
ESTIENNE C. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AP 2.
ÉTIENNE J. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 2.
HINOJOSA et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AP 5.
ROMANN et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 1.
TANAWA E. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 8.