Pole 2: Summary of the lessons learnt from the programme, by Bernard Collignon (HydroConseil) and Xavier Crépin (Isted), with contributions from Denis Dakouré (DRH Bobo Dioulasso), Ahmed Ould Weddady (DH Nouakchott) and research team n° 2

• Water service actors in small centres and peri-urban areas

Comparative analysis of the performances of different delegated management systems for public water collection points

The institutional landscape of the drinking water sector in African cities has become noticeably denser over the past ten years. At the end of the 80s, it consisted simply in the overall control of public water distribution companies, over which municipalities had no control and which were seriously concerned only with meeting demand from middle income families.

Partly helped by the withdrawal of the State, new actors have now appeared in the urban service field (user associations, NGOs, small businesses, etc.) or existing actors (such as local authorities) have become more autonomous. These have therefore sought to extend their activities and have naturally come up against somewhat rigid monopoly situations inherited from previous periods. The following is a rapid review of these new actors.

For a long time local authorities were restricted to playing the role of "driving belt" for the central power. This is particularly striking in countries such as Mali, Burundi or Togo, where locally elected representatives seemed to have no control over public services such as drinking water. Amongst the French-speaking African countries, only in Ruanda did the communes (through their by-laws) have any real power over water services. For the past six years, many countries have begun a process of decentralisation, giving local authorities important prerogatives (if not resources) to ensure public water services.

In the underprivileged areas of large cities (such as Port-au-Prince, Bamako or Dakar), to compensate for the weakness and inefficiency of municipal structures, civil society is organising itself into a large variety of associations (churches; youth, women's or neighbourhood associations, etc.). The vast majority of these are attracted by the idea of entering the arena of major public services (water, education, health, roads, etc.) to give direction to their mission, even if this kind of service does not actually form part of their social objective.

At the end of many projects for building drinking water supply systems, the project's promoters introduce a new structure, which is then responsible for running the system. This structure is often chosen following a process of co-opting, which sometimes involves a large proportion of the inhabitants concerned. It therefore has genuine "elective" legitimacy, frequently reinforced by the presence of traditionally respected members of the community. This has certain advantages (such as genuine influence over the users of the distribution network), but also disadvantages (i.e. a degree of conservatism and the exclusion of certain social groups: users with no other choice, women, young people, foreigners, etc.).

The role of these ad hoc committees (i.e. set up by projects, principally to serve the objectives of sustainability defined by projects – cf. Tanawa, RA 8) is particularly significant in small centres, where customary links and the importance of family bonds outweigh all other considerations. These bonds still play an important role in a town of 50,000 inhabitants, such as Mopti (cf. Bouju, RA 10) but this tends to weaken in large metropolises such as Dakar (cf. Champetier and Durand, RA 9).

These are businesses or individuals who negotiate a concession, a lease or the delegated management of a water distribution system with the State or local authorities. This type of operator makes no claim to represent the users or to speak on their behalf, but rather to provide them with a good quality service, well-suited to the demand.

In Mauritania, Tidiane Koita (RA 9) interviewed these concession-holders and his report paints a detailed picture of their activities, their expectations and their demands. He clearly shows their frustration at having no legal legitimacy, either vis à vis the central administration or the local authorities, despite carrying out most of the tasks which allow water to be supplied to the inhabitants.

These are new arrivals in the water distribution sector. Given the lack of communication and of negotiation between representatives of the State and of users, NGOs and consultants are occupying a central position in negotiating new ways of managing public services in large centres such as Bamenda (cf. De Boismenu, PA 6) or Port-au-Prince (cf. the summary of the study steered by HydroConseil, RA 9).

The case studies and the surveys carried out during the first phase of the research activity steered by Burgeap (RA 2) highlighted the wide range of institutional solutions being used in various contexts. (The following paragraphs draw freely on the summary of the research steered by Burgeap). Given this diversity, the research team successfully focused on structuring a consistent approach to the organisation of the service, the role of the users, who covered which costs, links between the service and local bodies, links between projects and national policy, and finally links between the various stakeholders involved.

In most of the countries studied, urban areas can be distinguished from rural areas by the way in which drinking water services are organised. Small centres and peri-urban areas have the particularity of being intermediate areas as far as previously defined categories are concerned, areas neglected by institutional organisations and as a result coming under the responsibility either of urban management bodies or government departments in charge of rural areas.

The management results of the first generation of village hydraulic projects were poor: either the rapid failure of pumps caused users to turn back to traditional water collection points, or the way in which the new installations operated failed to attract the inhabitants away from their previous water supply practices. The disastrous results of many municipal standpost networks is also well-known. Many were abandoned in the 70s or closed in the 80s because municipalities had accumulated significant levels of debt with the water companies, and because of the deterioration of many installations as a result of lack of maintenance.

As for the spread of delegated management in peri-urban areas, this results from two main factors: funders' recommendations on paying for water (in line with recommendations made by structural adjustment programmes) and recognition of private customers' practices of re-selling water which became widespread in the 70s.

The community model is mainly found in rural areas and in small centres (less than 10,000 inhabitants) where traditional bonds and authority are still strong. A group of inhabitants, represented by a committee or an association, is responsible for providing the water production/distribution service, using installations often financed by a project, and nearly always belonging to the State. Responsibility for selling the water is with water vendors, who are either salaried or paid at a marginal rate, while the committee or the association is sometimes uses a service provider for maintenance. Relationships between the various actors are rarely set out clearly in a written document (contract). This is the most widespread model and is particularly marked in Senegal, where more than 800 networks are managed in this way.

The theoretical advantages of this model are that it ensures the "participation" of the inhabitants, i.e. that they are responsible for the installation and represented, and the sustainability of the system by specifically anticipating how maintenance and operating costs are to be financed (tariffs and cost recovery methods) and sometimes how the cost of partially replacing installations are to be covered (from savings schemes which are to a greater or lesser extent compulsory). This system also has the advantage of keeping down management costs (since management delegates are often voluntary), but this runs the risk of being at the expense of the performances of the system. The professionalism of the members of the management committee is therefore an important factor, and has been very thoroughly addressed in the pilot activity of AFVP and ISF in Senegal (PA 2).

Delegating standpost distribution to private managers tends to be spreading in the urban and peri-urban areas of black Africa, where traditional bonds are less strong, the inhabitants more individualist, and therefore community actions more difficult to implement (cf. Tanawa RA 8). The enterprise (public or private) holding the water service concession at national level fulfils the roles of production, transport, and distribution, but sub-contracts the final stage of the distribution chain.

Responsibility for selling the water to customers and for maintaining distribution points is delegated to a commercial, usually private, operator, (but sometimes to a non-profit organisation). These responsibilities are generally mutually agreed and signed in a contract which may vary in detail. Imposed on the leasee, or the manager, by the concessionery body, and it is designed more to protect the latter's interests than to ensure the quality of service to the user. The service is in fact often provided by a water vendor, recruited by the manager and paid by him (at either a flat rate or a marginal rate), and who is as a result outside the formal contractual relationship.

There are two main advantages to this system: it improves the neighbourhood service by passing responsibility to a third party close to the users and potentially subject to pressure from them; and it reduces the management costs of the authority awarding the concession by distancing it from the unpredictable nature of operating the service.

Norms for the quality of the distribution service are not covered by any contract and not regulated: no body is officially charged with defining the level of services to be provided, with translating these into a task specification and with ensuring that this is respected. The absence of this regulatory role is in fact one of the key features highlighted by a great many case studies. On the other hand, the security provided by transferring the risk of commercial exploitation is genuine, and there are a whole series of mechanisms (security deposits, recall of the security deposit, shutting off the meter) enabling the authority awarding the concession to monitor the commercial activity of the concessionaire (and this is amply illustrated by the results of the pilot activity carried out by the twin towns in Mali, PA 5).

The main malfunctions identified can be classified into three main categories:

• those resulting from faults in the design of the system for supplying customers;
• those resulting from practices before delegated management was organised which still persist and which interfere with the way it operates;
• those resulting from a frequent gap between the formal definition of roles and tasks on the one hand, and responsibilities and forms of usage empirically built up in the field on the other.

In the face of these difficulties, the current tendency seems to be to attempt to take "the best" from each of the two "models", without going so far as to "standardise" public water collection point management models, urban or rural, since the constraints of each differ too widely.

Based on the principles of leasing, these new methods of commercial exploitation depend on "dismantling" the management chain (several operators share the various roles between them), increasing contractualisation of roles (sometimes in the form of a pyramid of contracts: leasing, retail selling, maintenance) and seeking stable triangular links which encourage the involvement of a third party in the way the service is regulated.

In diagrammatic terms, there are five roles: contracting the built structures, monitoring and regulation, commercial exploitation, selling to the consumer and maintenance. One of the main features of delegated management of public water collection points is thus splitting responsibilities between actors which differ widely in their nature and in their statutes – central and local state departments, private enterprises, non-profit bodies (user committees and associations), individuals (water vendors, private managers under contract) – all of whom have potentially divergent or even antagonistic approaches. This brings with it some risks, since the efficiency and the reliability of the system depend on how well the whole system is co-ordinated and regulated, as well as on inferred transaction costs, which are difficult to control, and which can be as high as the previous structural costs. Case studies also reveal that the apparently clear division of roles is often "blurred". There are several reasons behind this confusion and these need to be highlighted:

• the way in which the investment is made confuses the distribution of roles for a long time, with responsibility for contracting work apparently often partially absent. In response to these difficulties, many countries are using ways of transferring, in whole or in part, the contracting role to local bodies;
• the limited means at the disposal of public departments make it impossible for them to carry out the monitoring and regulation role they are supposed to fulfil, and the very lax presence of the State leaves the field open to other "informal" monitoring authorities;
• the place and the role of water collection point committees in the "community" management model are riddled with uncertainties, the principle of voluntary contributions posing problems when the commercial exploitation of the system becomes too complicated;
• generally speaking, overlapping between reforms completed to a greater or lesser extent and partially contradictory, contribute to the confusion.

The limitations of public involvement open the way to greater involvement on the part of private operators and underline the need to structure their links with other stakeholders within the framework of operational agreements.

All of the examples studied included the end-users paying for their water, but the way in which payments are calculated and recovered vary widely.

• It is universally agreed that tariffs should cover as a minimum operating and maintenance costs.
• Given the cost of infrastructures in low population density perimeters (villages, small centres and urban peripheral areas) and the low average purchasing power of their inhabitants, there is a prevailing idea that basic investments must be borne by the State or a national body with an adequate financial footing, with the help of external funders (loans or aid).
• This cost-sharing should not, however, disguise areas of interdependency. Thus the technical choices which determine the cost of the initial investment, also affect operating costs: a "cheap" investment could for example lead to high recurrent costs.
• The greatest uncertainties relate to financing the costs of renewing and extending networks, and the question of changing built structures (e.g. possibilities of individual connections) and physically extending these to supply new urbanised perimeter areas is rarely explicitly raised.

The efficiency of the service provided is closely linked to taking account of the actual demand: the user reasons like a consumer in judging the cost of the service/supply, but also from a commercial point of view where maintenance and renewal costs are concerned when user associations, management committees or water collection point committees exist.

Most African countries have embarked on a relatively firm policy of decentralisation of water services, transferring certain State services responsibilities to the communes. The latter have not, however, been given any additional resources (notably financial) and this transfer is therefore sometimes seen as the State "jettisoning" a service it could no longer afford to provide.

Most African countries have started to privatise the public enterprise which had the monopoly of water distribution in major cities. This process is perfectly consistent with policies of structural adjustment and is being nurtured by all the funding agencies. This transfer is not necessarily occurring at the same time as an extension of water services (towards smaller cities) or restricting the service to users who are "good payers", as might have been feared from the "liberal" doctrine which underlies these processes.

What we can observe in the field is more akin to "unchanged perimeter" privatisation. This can be explained by the enormous cost of the investment which would be required to install new networks, costs which the new private enterprises refuse to bear themselves. Privatisation therefore affects only the use of existing networks, which often remain the property of the State, whose interests are sometimes represented by a State heritage company. Responsibility for any future extensions remains with the State.

Alongside national scale enterprises, we find other private enterprises appearing and rapidly growing, and these form a specific link in the water service chain (repairers, standpost managers, small network concessionaires, water cart and lorry-drivers, etc.) These were the subject of particular study in the research activity steered by HydroConseil (RA 9), and they appear in practically all the studies as being particularly important, although national policies fail to take them adequately into account.

The growth of these actors seems to stem from the same philosophy as that which underlies the privatisation of national enterprises, but there are still many obstacles in their path:

• a legal framework (in fiscal and social terms) which is poorly suited to small enterprises;
• the lack of an efficient commercial legislature;
• recently privatised public enterprises' abuse of their dominant position;
• civil servants' mistrust of private operators;
• the absence of regulatory organisations the authority of which is universally recognised, which would define the "rules of the game" and ensure that they were respected.

In large cities, public authorities have very little control over urbanisation, as most houses are built without land titles and without planning permission (cf. Tanawa, RA 8 and Valfrey RA 9). It is difficult to supply water to popular areas, which often have no service roads, using the usual norms for urban areas, particularly as their inhabitants have a standard of living which bars them from access to the classic home service.

It is therefore now urgent to implement more realistic public service policies, taking account of the needs of all users (including those of the very poor) and of all the water collection points they use (including the most precarious of these, such as wells and springs). This area, which has been very little explored to date, was studied in the course of the pilot activities in Yaoundé (cf. Adeline, PA 1) and in Kindia (cf. Romann, RA 1).

Projects are often inward-looking. To avoid the unexpected and to satisfy their masters (funders and central administrations), they remain fairly insensitive to their environment and to demand from population groups:

• adding on more uncoordinated projects increases the risks of inequalities between regions or cities;
• the lack of co-ordination also jeopardises the setting up of a consistent national policy on water services;
• projects tend to reason strictly within "their own" area of intervention, which is not necessarily the most relevant as far as the management dynamics they are attempting to promote are concerned;
• the project implementor is required to produce a quantitative result which encourages him to "skip" important stages (such as the co-financing of the system by the users) to satisfy his client (Tanawa, RA 8);
• the project implementor tends to prolong its existence, through artificial structures which are set up for that one occasion and which are probably not viable.

In a field which is changing as rapidly as that of water and sanitation in small centres and peri-urban areas, one of the key challenges for States and funders will therefore be to manage to "transcend" "project" approaches. This implies three things:

• including all the activities being financed by various funders in consistent national policies, thanks to major legislative and institutional efforts;
• making project implementors set less rigid objectives, and demanding that they genuinely take demand from local actors into account;
• limiting the danger of introspection, encouraging projects which create contractual links between several local actors, by avoiding setting up new structures the survival of which is directly linked to that of the project.

LEGITIMACY? WHAT FOR?

Why should we raise the question of the legitimacy of new actors in the field of drinking water? Despite the influence they have on social life, we do not raise the question of the legitimacy of grain sellers or of griots.

The legitimacy of actors in the field of water is a sensitive issue for the following reasons:

• water is a basic public service, which has shaped the structure of many human societies;
• the quality of this service has a major impact on public health;
• this service generates an important volume of activity, in terms of turnover and jobs; it therefore has important economic implications;
• understanding urban development means understanding the services which structure this, such as drinking water; it therefore has important political implications.

The question scarcely arose while this service was provided by the State and municipalities, and while no-one called their legitimacy into question (through lack of any opposition, or because all opposition had been suppressed). But over the last ten years or so, the political and institutional landscape has become much denser in Africa, and new actors demanding to be allowed to play an increasing role in the management of public service have come onto the scene. Several claiming different sources of legitimacy can even find themselves in competition with each other.

ELECTIVE LEGITIMACY

It is extremely difficult to organise elections in towns and cities where the population is largely illiterate, poorly informed and where there is little reliable census information.

Direct universal suffrage elections to structures representing users is therefore just as rare in Africa as it is in Europe. The few rare examples are generally in small communities of a few dozen families. In cities, where population numbers are too high, the tendency is to use partial ballots (only those who wish to take part in the AGM vote) or indirect ballots (standpost delegates, the committee, the permanent officers of an associatioin).

TRADITIONAL LEGITIMACY

The approval of elders (cf. Bouju, RA 10, who studied the case of Mopti) or of religious dignitaries is often a very effective way of acquiring a certain legitimacy. These respected members of the community are therefore often courted by projects and by ad hoc committees, without always being too careful to check any possible conflict of interest between them (as owners of land, of springs, etc.) and the public service.

OFFICIAL LEGITIMACY

For a long time, the legitimacy of enterprises managing water rested only on the unfailing support they received from the State, which guaranteed them a monopoly situation. The consent of the civil service is indeed still regarded as a major source of legitimacy and this explains the predominant role that it can play when concessions for standposts are being awarded (cf. Champetier and Durand, RA 9, for the example of Dakar or Morel à l'Huissier and Verdeil, PA 5, for that of the Malian towns).

Finally, and slightly paradoxically, the support of international funders is an effective way of acquiring a certain local legitimacy, although these funders do not in themselves have legitimacy in the countries in which they are funding projects. For example, the company which has won a lease bid following a call for tenders validated by an international funder enjoys a strong position, guaranteed by the monitoring of the call for tenders carried out by the funder's experts.

PROVIDING A GOOD QUALITY SERVICE

Contrary to what there is sometimes a tendency to say, the inhabitants of popular neighbourhoods are not simply pawns in the hands of more or less manipulative players. They are first and foremost users, heads of families confronted daily by the difficulties of obtaining water. Anyone who can provide them with a good quality service, at a price they can afford, will therefore always enjoy undeniable legitimacy on their part. The private concessionaires of small water distribution systems in Mauritania, who enjoy no legal protection, rely largely on this type of support to guarantee their job and in practice, so far no conscientious concessionaire has ever been thrown out of his job. The support of satisfied users is therefor an extremely strong source of legitimacy.

PROVIDING A MODERATELY PRICED SERVICE

Instead of using quality of service as a argument, certain water sector operators sometimes try to play on the price of the service. By bending the rules ensuring the quality of the water, production costs can indeed be reduced. They thus acquire a genuine form of legitimacy (it is they who are providing the lowest cost service), but one which is poorly compatible with public health.

MOBILISING USERS

For a new arrival on the institutional stage, the most "legitimate" way of acquiring legitimacy is to mobilise users around one's programme or one's activities. Operators of the "user association, management committee, etc." type therefore tend to organise many meetings and formal assemblies of the population (cf. Tanawa, RA 8) and not infrequently new leaders go on to make a political career.

There is always some danger of straying down the "populist" path in this kind of exercise, but conversely, anyone organising an open meeting is exposing himself to criticism, and many studies have shown that it is the least efficient actors (and the least scrupulous) who avoid this risk, both in large cities (as in Port-au-Prince, where some water committees are reluctant to present their accounts at an AGM) and in small centres.

SUBSIDISING WATER SERVICES OR PASSING THE COST ON TO OTHERS

For a politician, a good way to ensure one's popularity has always been to provide a free or heavily subsidised public service, whilst passing on the bulk of the costs to be covered to others (the State, future generations, etc.). This type of strategy is frequently adopted by some politicians seeking election, and it then poses a major difficulty when introducing efficient cost recovery policies. Thus, in some countries, internal political considerations can ruin the rationalisation efforts of distribution companies.

INVOLVING LOCAL POLITICAL LEADERS

Many water distribution management committees include locally elected representatives (mayors, deputies, etc.). Their participation is obviously an advantage when the committee needs to negotiate a subsidy, a new piece of equipment, an electricity connection, etc. with the State. But in general it is very difficult to judge who profits the most from the legitimacy of the other: the committee which benefits from the network of influence of a political leader, or the latter, who claims to have the popular support of user associations that he has in some respects infiltrated.

NEGOTIATING RECOGNITION FROM OTHER ACTORS

In the absence of direct legitimacy (i.e. provided by the population concerned), certain actors concentrate their efforts on obtaining recognition of their importance from other influential actors in the same sector. This process of "reciprocal legitimacy" is extremely dangerous, as it enables actors with no legitimacy whatsoever to prop each other up until they "fill the whole stage".

This type of procedure is fairly widespread in cities where the situation is one of conflict to such an extent that it seems set to last indefinitely. Several rival actors can then find it of mutual benefit to each recognise a certain degree of legitimacy in the other, in exchange for power-sharing.

This occurs regularly in Port-au-Prince, between community-based organisations affiliated to political parties in considerable conflict with each other (cf. Mathieusand, RA 5, and Valfrey, RA 9). This would also seem to be one of the ways in which dialogue could start up in Bamenda (cf.; de Boismenu).

FORCING ONE'S WAY IN

From a moral point of view, a powerful body which imposes its predominance through violence seems totally lacking in legitimacy. It would, however, be naive to overlook that the legitimacy of many regimes has been built on violence. If such regimes then wish to achieve a certain stability, they obviously need to provide a certain quality of public service. But a small dose of violence tends to work and notoriously inefficient regimes (such as Mobuto's in Zaire or Duvalier's in Haiti) have been able to survive for several decades, basing their legitimacy on a judicious blend of corruption and physical violence.

Physical violence is also very widely used by certain private operators wishing to hold onto the advantages of a captive market. Thus, in Port-au-Prince, the managers of standposts have long been "tontons-macoutes". And one can easily imagine the fights between armed gangs around pumping stations in Mogadiscio or Freetown.

Contractualisation between the various actors is a subject being taken more and more seriously in water supply programmes. Nor is this specific to water services. Research and pilot activities carried out under this programme have thus very often culminated in the negotiation of contracts.

This great importance attached to the process of contractualisation is relatively new. For example, plans for contracts made by the Department for operation and maintenance in Senegal (as early as 1984) to delegate the management of motorised pumping stations, have never been put into effect without this seeming to bother anyone unduly.

Contractualisation is also a process of reciprocal legitimacy between the various parties to the contract. Each explicitly recognises the importance of the other and each agrees to share authority with the other party. It would be naive to believe that there is never an ulterior motive. Moreover, there is a prevailing impression that contracts are drawn up mainly to control the activity of the weakest link in the chain and that the dominant operator seizes for himself the roles of defining, monitoring and sanctioning (cf. Jaglin, RA 2).

Signing a contract, like any formalisation process, tends to freeze the existing situation, at the expense of the flexibility necessary to adapt to a fast changing economic and social context. Contractualisation should therefore preferably be seen as a process of on-going negotiation, and the use of "off-the-shelf" pro forma contracts should be avoided. As stressed by Henri Coing (RA 2) during the workshop, the process of negotiating between the parties to the contract in fact also appears to be as important as the contract itself.

PUBLIC WATER DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES

The main strategy used by public companies holding water service concessions is to obtain a monopoly position, through the Water Code or their concession contract. This legal legitimacy has very clear limitations as far as their customers are concerned, and nothing will stop them from looking elsewhere for the service which suits them, when it suits them, and at a price they are prepared to pay. This is why "clamping down on black market water vendors" has very little success in any country.

Civil servant departments naturally tend to rest their case on the legitimacy of the State ("it is we who represent the State, which has the monopoly of water production and distribution"). It is on this basis that some SNEC managers (cf. Adeline et al., PA 1) propose to tax private wells and users of springs, in the name of the supposed water "monopoly". This supposition is even more shocking when we consider that the same companies are demanding greater autonomy in management, in setting tariffs, etc., distancing themselves even further from their objective of providing water to all families, including the very poor.

PRIVATE ENTERPRISES HOLDING WATER SERVICE CONCESSIONS

The situation of concessionaire companies has been changing rapidly over the past few years against the overall background of the privatisation of public enterprises. The legitimacy they can acquire from their natural monopoly (as representatives of the State) is diminishing. They therefore tend to compensate for this formal loss of legitimacy by pursuing a better image vis à vis their clients (e.g. improving the service, the quality of the water, relations with their clients), as shown by SODECI’s successful experiment in Côte d’Ivoire.

The privatisation process generally gives rise to international calls for tender, which gives some guarantee of transparency and can bestow a certain legitimacy on the successful bidder. However, the private monopoly situation on a country-wide scale thus acquired is by definition "illegitimate", since a private enterprise should be in a competitive environment. The fact that the main shareholders of these new concessionaires are generally foreign companies moreover reinforces this lack of legitimacy.

The monopoly they acquire can result in abuses, especially in countries where the State has few effective means of controlling the activities of large enterprises, and especially if these are operating on an international scale. (The turnover of the three main companies involved in these privatisation processes – Lyonnaise des Eaux, the Vivendi group and the Bouygues group – is after all equivalent to five times the GNP of all the countries of the Sahel put together).

MUNICIPALITIES

Municipalities (and the deputies who represent their interests at national level) have for some years been arguing for the adoption of new codes for local authorities (laws relating to decentralisation) conferring on them greater responsibilities and powers over water services and over municipal income from the sale of water (direct sales, patents, a tax per cubic metre, etc.) This is a highly "legal" legitimacy, but one which is in fact an important means of acquiring power given that such municipalities’ main rival remains the central administration itself, and particularly departments of hydraulics, concentrated in capital cities, which have until very recently held all the reins of power in this field (cf. Hinojosa, PA 5).

The experience of the 60s (when many municipalities managed water services with direct authority from the State) was nevertheless a disappointing one, both for the consumers (who received a poor service) and for the communes (which made a loss – cf. Tanawa, RA 8). Will their new political, economic and institutional situation enable them to provide better water services? Nothing suggests that this is the case, but it is fairy understandable that they demand to manage these services, both for financial reasons (drinking water is now universally seen as a paid service, which was not the case in 1960), and for reasons of legitimacy, (what could give a municipality a better image than improving public services?).

USER ASSOCIATIONS

User associations can obtain legal recognition (a formal status) enabling them to own assets (such as pumping installations), to open bank accounts and to initiate legal proceedings. They are not, however, very keen to acquire legal recognition and do so most often only at the instigation of projects themselves (cf. Valfrey or Collignon, RA 9, or Estienne, PA 2). Associations are in fact fearful of being over-burdened by administrative or fiscal requirements. They therefore look for simple statutes outside fiscal control:

• co-operatives in Mauritania, such as the co-operative members of the Nassim federation;
• GIE in Senegal;
• user associations (planned as part of the management reform of motorised boreholes in Senegal);
• non-profit associations (rather than co-operatives) in Port-au-Prince.

Legal recognition does not in itself make such associations more representative of the population. Elections are always difficult to organise and an effective committee is rarely possible without involving traditional respected members of the community (cf. Bouju, RA 10), even if the latter fail to represent all sections of society.

The legitimacy bestowed by legal recognition is often used by members of management committees to justify the payment of fees, which can be quite high, especially in villages where an agricultural wage is less than 5 French francs per day. Senegal’s experience, however, proves that legal recognition is not essential for this.

SMALL CONCESSIONAIRES

Concessionaires of small water distribution networks (in small centres or popular neighbourhoods) know that their legitimacy depends above all on the support of satisfied customers. They would probably like to strengthen this through concession contracts making their position more secure, for longer periods for example (in Mauritania concessions cannot be awarded for longer than one month – cf. Koita, RA 9).

MEDIATION ORGANISATIONS

Some organisations concentrate on mediating between stakeholder groups whose existence is unavoidable, but which find it difficult to collaborate or even simply to dialogue with each other (State technical services and user associations, for example). Their legitimacy rests on their being accepted by the various groups for which they are helping to establish a dialogue. They therefore find themselves continually walking a tightrope between positions which are difficult to reconcile.

The intervention of these types of organisations is by definition temporary. They are supposed to withdraw as soon as mechanisms for negotiation between local actors have been set up and their efficiency should therefore be measured in terms of how quickly they can achieve this. Experience shows, however, that all actors find it useful to be able to turn to a neutral "referee" when a conflict occurs. Mediation organisations are therefore often called upon to play this role, which largely exceeds their stated mission.

Reports relating to this summary

ADELINE T. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AP 1.

BOUJU J., 1998. Rapport final de l’AR 10.

CARLIER R., 1995. Évaluation des réseaux d'AEP du programme Hassir. Audit et propositions.

CHAMPETIER S. et DURAND P., 1997. Les opérateurs privés au service de l'eau dans les quartiers irréguliers de Dakar (AR 9).

COLLIGNON B. et al., 1997. Les opérateurs privés du service de l'eau dans les petits centres de quatre pays sahéliens. Rapport final de l'AR 9.

COLLIGNON B. et al., 1998. Les opérateurs privés du service de l'eau dans les quartiers populaires des grandes métropoles du tiers-monde. Rapport final de l'AR 9.

DAKOURE D., 1997. Rôle des opérateurs privés dans la distribution d'eau potable dans les quartiers périurbains et les centres secondaires dans le sud-ouest du Burkina Faso. Rapport à HydroConseil dans le cadre de l'AR 9. 21 p.

DE BOISMENU I., 1997. Rapport final AP 6.

DE BOISMENU I., 1997. Rapport final AR 5.

ESTIENNE C. et al. Rapport final AP 2.

ETIENNE J. et al., 1998. Rapport final de l'AR 2.

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