Independent Water and Sanitation Providers in African Cities: Full Report of a Ten-Country Study. Collignon, Bernard, and Marc Vézina. Water and Sanitation Program. UNDP-World Bank. April 2000.
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In the context of the burgeoning growth of Africa's cities, neither state monopolies, their privatized successors, the concessionaires, nor non-profit or community-based organisations has been able to keep up with the pace of rising demand for water and sanitation services in the low-income urban areas. Fewer than 30 percent of households in Bamako, Cotonou and Dar es Salaam have access to piped drinking water. Piped sewerage is but a far distant dream for 90 percent of urban Africans. Yet governments have generally continued to give priority to the tried and true, standards issue solution: a city-wide piped network run by a single, monopolistic operator.

But this monolithic solution does not match the wide variation in demand for these services by a wide variety of households, living in very different environments and using different amounts of water that vary by the time of day and from season to season. Even the most experienced international water corporations have had to admit how hard it is to find a way to get water to poor urban households, most of whom live in unplanned or poorly planned subdivisions, often located at the city's edge, on difficult terrain (steep hillsides and valleys) and in undeveloped infill areas. These marginal locations are very difficult to serve through the usual water distribution and drainage networks.

Independent providers respond to the needs and preferences of a clientele composed primarily of low-income families. How do they manage to do this, for customers who are said to be too poor to pay for city water? How can they provide service coverage of areas where city water authorities and concessionaires hesitate to invest? The answer is that independent providers' services are demand-driven and they deliver them the way their clientele needs them: reliably, and in small quantities which remain affordable when family funds are tight and income irregular. The clients they serve have historically been of little interest to the large concessionaires, whose primary objective is to make a profit.

Independent providers serve many functions in the provision of water and sanitation services. Some manage one or more water points or sell individual buckets of water from door-to-door. Others are hired to clean out latrines and pump out septic tanks. Still others operate small piped water systems and even, in Cotonou (Benin), a sewage treatment plant.

These activities provide jobs for several thousand people in each capital city (1 to 2 percent of the labor force) from 70 to 90 percent of those employed in the water sector (compared to 10-30 percent who work for the concessionaires). They provide a man source of income for dozens of thousands of low-income families and generate a volume of business comparable to that of the city water companies, despite the fact they must survive in a difficult environment, are perceived as operating outside the mainstream, and are often subject to the hostility of government authorities.

More flexible than the concessionaires, independent operators can respond more easily to rapid changes in demand linked to the growth of unplanned urban areas. They offer a wide variety of services close to where people live, allowing them to select the most convenient. They adapt to the limitations of their clients' needs and income, and communicate face-to-face with their clients about problems, for example, with water quality, rather than at a distance and through the time-consuming bureaucratic procedures of the concessionaires.

Over the last ten years, decentralisation has been at the heart of political debate, and the practice of delegation of responsibility for public service has been spreading. The water and sanitation sectors have been opened to private financing, and central authorities have transferred much responsibility for water and sanitation services to local authorities. Supporting independent providers is thus perfectly in tune with current institutional and economic trends in Africa, and it does not imply a choice between city-wide entities and independent operators. The central and municipal governments' roles are rather to see that these two kinds of providers complement each other in the marketplace and that fair competition is encouraged. Given the choice, users can be trusted to judge for themselves where to take their business.

For those who choose to look beyond standard leasing or licensing formulas and who are willing to give independent providers an incentive to invest in all forms of facilities – drainage, standpipes, suction trucks, and sludge processing plants – constrains that limit the flexibility of operations need to be removed, including cumbersome administrative procedures, expropriation without compensation, punitive fines and harassment. An effort should be made to limit the extent of unfair competition from subsidised public enterprises.

This does not mean a reduction in the public sector's role, but rather a refocusing of public authorities' attention on regulatory functions that protect consumer interests, such as:

• requiring regular financial audits of independent providers' accounts and technical inspection of equipment and infrastructure;
• establishing a regulatory framework which is based on a supporting and consultative relationship between providers and local authorities responsible for water and sanitation oversight;
• creating coordination mechanisms at the municipal level where elected local officials and community leaders can discuss and debate how basic urban services should be developed and at what standards, without unduly interfering with ongoing provision of service;
• adapting regulations to reflect conditions in the unplanned peri-urban areas;
• encourage professional development among independent operators by recognizing their associations as representative interlocutors.

Including professional organizations in the dialog would enhance their authority to negotiate with public authorities and the concessionaires. From a technical perspective, better partnerships between public and private actors would facilitate the emergence of appropriate service standards that would reflect the independent providers' experience in the day-to-day, face-to-face delivery of water and sanitation services.

Improving services available to low-income households and reducing their costs requires finding the sources of synergy inherent in the interfaces between activities that public and private actors have so fare been pursuing without talking to each other. When they sit down together, in each city, to explore their options, they may wish to consider the key lessons that have emerged from this study:

1 - Competition is a much better way to ensure fair rates and efficient service than administrative supervision.

2 - Independent providers offer door-to-door services that are well adapted to the varied needs of households living in unplanned urban areas.

3 - Official recognition and respectful treatment of independent operators can lead to new ideas, sources of energy, and even new sources of financing.

4 - Mutual respect and partnership among all water and sanitation sector actors can help to bring water and sanitation issues into the broader urban development policy debate, in particular as they relate to health and environmental issues.