Hybrid management models: blending community and private management

A clear distinction is generally made between community and private management of water and sanitation services. This distinction reflects the different motivations, values, attitudes and approaches generally associated with each type of provider.

In WSUP programmes, the local context is often suited to community or to private management models. But in practice, WSUP often seeks to go beyond this “community” versus “private” dichotomy, to try to get “the best of both worlds”. For instance, CBO operators are often encouraged to adopt commercial practices and achieve business efficiency. Similarly, entrepreneurs are encouraged to be more supportive of the needs of the community, and more responsive to poverty and gender issues.

In this Topic Brief, the approaches used by WSUP in Nairobi, Kumasi and Antananarivo under the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme are examined from this perspective of blending community and private management models. The Topic Brief concludes with practical guidance on this issue for programme managers. Click on the image below to download the Topic Brief.

Designing effective contracts for small-scale service providers in urban water and sanitation

Extending water and sanitation services to the urban poor will often involve contractual relationships between small-scale entrepreneurs and municipalities or utilities. The expectation is that poor communities are more likely to receive improved services when delivery is formalised under contractual agreements that provide clarity to all parties, as well as systems for enforcement of contractual obligations.

This Topic Brief draws on WSUP’s experience in the six-city African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme to illustrate ways of dealing with the challenges that arise when developing contracts between large and small service providers in the urban setting. The Topic Brief gives practical guidance for programme managers on how to make contracts of this type more effective and more enforceable.

Getting communities engaged in water and sanitation projects: participatory design and consumer feedback

Community engagement in water and sanitation service delivery is key for ensuring project sustainability and accountability.

This Topic Brief looks at community engagement approaches used by WSUP in three cities within the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme: Antananarivo (Madagascar), Kumasi (Ghana) and Maputo (Mozambique).

Click on the image above to download the Topic Brief

The specific focus is on ways to encourage community involvement in the design of water supply and sanitation projects, and ways in which service providers can elicit input and feedback from people living in low-income communities.

The Topic Brief discusses several cases in which community engagement has positively contributed to the development of WASH services. It highlights some of the key challenges currently faced by WSUP and other sector organisations, and ends with practical recommendations for programme managers about how to engage low-income communities.

Dealing with land tenure and tenancy challenges in water and sanitation services delivery

Providing water and sanitation services to the urban poor often takes place in contexts with complex formal and informal land ownership arrangements. Firstly, the people in most need of improved water and sanitation are often tenants, and this raises diverse challenges: for example, landlords may be unwilling to invest in better toilets. Secondly, improving water and sanitation services often requires land for construction of communal or public facilities, and land tenure again raises diverse problems here.

How can these challenges be overcome? Drawing on WSUP’s experience in the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme, this Topic Brief gives an overview of this area, and discusses possible solutions. The Topic Brief also offers practical guidance for programme managers.

This Topic Brief is the first in a series of four, documenting learning from the ACF programme. Watch out for the following titles, which will be released over the coming weeks:

• Getting communities engaged in water and sanitation projects:
  participatory design and consumer feedback
• Designing effective contracts for small-scale service providers in urban water and sanitation
• Hybrid management models: blending community and private management

To view all WSUP’s publications, visit www.wsup.com/sharing.

Sanitation surcharges collected through water bills: a way forward for financing pro-poor sanitation?

Market-driven models for sanitation in low-income areas are of unquestionable importance, but there is broad consensus that the market needs to be supported by some sort of public revenue stream. One approach to revenue generation is to include a sanitation surcharge within water bills.

This Discussion Paper is a situation review of sanitation surcharge systems in African cities, focusing on systems designed to raise revenues for improving sanitation in low-income districts. The review considers existing pro-poor surcharge systems in Lusaka and Ouagadougou; systems that cannot currently be considered pro-poor, in Dakar, Beira and Antananarivo; and the special case of Maputo, where there is ongoing debate about how a surcharge might be introduced. Lusaka’s model is of particular interest: could it be applied more widely to raise finance for pro-poor sanitation?

For more publications in this series, visit www.wsup.com/sharing

Recognising and dealing with informal influences in water and sanitation services delivery

Donor-funded water and sanitation improvement programmes tend to focus on and operate within the formal frameworks put in place by municipal or national governments. These frameworks broadly comprise the rules, laws and official policies that govern water and sanitation services delivery. However, in order to plan and implement programmes effectively, it is essential that implementers also recognise and take into account the influence of more subtle informal factors, such as conventions, norms of behaviour, and unwritten cultural codes of conduct.

This Topic Brief draws on WSUP’s experience in the 6-city African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme, to illustrate how both formal and informal factors can influence local service provider and low-income consumer behaviours. The Topic Brief also provides practical guidance aimed at sector programme managers to help explore and respond to some of the issues raised here, with a view to achieving greater project sustainability.

For more resources like this, visit www.wsup.com/sharing

Delegated management of water and sanitation services in urban areas: experiences from Kumasi, Ghana

Historically, water and sanitation service providers in low-income countries have struggled to accommodate rapid urban expansion, and particularly to serve the poor in peri-urban areas. One way to approach these challenges is to develop alternative approaches to service delivery, incorporating innovative institutional and contractual arrangements, and involving partnerships between communities, utilities, the private sector and regulators.

This Topic Brief focuses on a delegated management model developed in Kumasi (Ghana), where a WSUP-facilitated partnership between the water utility, the Metropolitan Assembly and a community management committee is starting to play a key role in expanding the provision of clean, affordable water and improved public toilet facilities in the low-income district of Kotei. The Brief explores the nature of the model, the contractual arrangements, and the central role of the community management committee. It also examines the potential for scale-up and replication.

For more resources like this, visit www.wsup.com/sharing

Video Resource: What’s working in urban water and sanitation?

Water and sanitation services, as we all know, remain grossly deficient in slum districts of cities throughout the less-developed world.

Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has produced a series of short videos relevant for everybody working to improve water and sanitation services for low-income urban consumers, highlighting ways in which African water utilities and other key actors are achieving real progress in this area.

The first four videos in the series are now available to watch on our YouTube channel and cover the following topics:

Emptying pits: a serious business
Paulinho, a small entrepreneur in Maputo, Mozambique, is moving into the pit emptying business. This video shows him at work.

Fix the leaks, serve the poor
How reducing non-revenue water (NRW) can free up water for low-income communities: experience from Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Surcharging for sanitation
Charging for sanitation through water bills. This video explores Lusaka’s sanitation levy system.

Connecting people
Tariff reform and social marketing as strategies for increasing household connections to the water network: experience from Maputo, Mozambique.

*The next set of videos in this series will follow shortly. Watch this space!

Six key solutions for pro-poor WASH financing

Financing water and sanitation improvements for the very poor remains a major challenge over large areas of the globe.

In the lead-up to World Water Forum 2012, sector specialists throughout the world have been asked to report specific solutions for addressing this challenge. Based on these concrete examples, IRC and WSUP today propose six key solutions for pro-poor WASH finance.

We urge financing institutions, governments and service providers worldwide to put these key solutions into practice:

1) Use life-cycle costing approaches to ensure that all life-cycle costs of infrastructure and services are fully taken into account, and that maintenance is financed.

2) Maximise local small-scale private-sector involvement in water and sanitation service provision for the poorest.

3) Introduce innovative water tariff systems that ensure financial sustainability and affordability for the poorest.

4) Use water revenues to cross-subsidise sanitation: incorporating sanitation charges into water bills is a key approach for financing sanitation services (including for people who could not otherwise afford them).

5) Use output-based financing approaches: by making disbursements dependent on demonstrated delivery of services to the poorest, there is an incentive for funds to be spent more efficiently.

6) Use progress-linked finance (PLF) approaches: the funder commits to provide concessional finance at a specified time in the future, on condition that the service provider has by that time demonstrated capacity for commercially viable service delivery to low-income areas.

For more details and specific case studies, see the Discussion Paper “Financing water and sanitation for the poor: six key solutions“, available from the WSUP website and the IRC website, or just click on the image below.

This Discussion Paper is co-published by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) and Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), as a background document for World Water Forum 6 (WWF6, Marseille, France,  12—17 March 2012).

Within the WWF6 area CS2 (Financing Water for All), IRC and WSUP are leading and coordinating Target Group CS2.7 “Pro-poor finance solutions for water and sanitation”.

Session date: Tuesday 13th March, 14:30—16:30.

It’s going to be an interesting and stimulating session: we hope to see you there!

Progress-Linked Finance: a study of the feasibility and practicality of a proposed WASH financing approach

Finding appropriate ways of financing sanitation for urban poor communities remains a key challenge. Approaches like output-based aid (OBA) are attracting enormous interest, and rightly so. However, OBA models aren’t appropriate for all contexts, and other approaches also need to be explored.

This report assesses the feasibility of a financing model, Progress-Linked Finance (PLF), designed to incentivise and support water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) service providers to meet the needs of poor urban residents in a financially sustainable manner. Under the PLF model, international financing institutions (potentially including multilaterals, bilaterals, and foundations) would enter into commitment agreements with urban WASH service providers, notably utilities and municipalities.

In very simple terms, PLF can be summarised as an agreement of the following type: “If the service provider can demonstrate 3 years from now that they have met conditions A, B and C in relation to financial viability and pro-poor commitment and capacity, the financing institution will provide a grant or loan of amount X for WASH scale-up”. In reality, agreements would likely be more complex, for example entailing a series of agreements involving a number of financing institutions. Central to the model is positive incentivisation coupled with rigorous verification that conditions have been met.

On the basis of desk analysis and wide-ranging interviews with urban WASH financing experts, this initial assessment finds that the PLF concept is broadly feasible. This report explores different variants of PLF, and suggests various ways in which the concept might be put into practice.

This Discussion Paper is co-published by Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). This paper is presented at this stage as a basis for sector debate, and should not be considered a definitive statement of the views of either WSUP or ODI.