Water Governance In African Cities

The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass on pressing water and sanitation challenges in African cities, stressing and widening inequalities, especially for the 56% of the urban population living in informal settlements, lacking basic handwashing facilities, and relying on public water points and shared toilets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass on pressing water and sanitation challenges in African cities, stressing and widening inequalities, especially for the 56% of the urban population living in informal settlements, lacking basic handwashing facilities, and relying on public water points and shared toilets. Before the pandemic, African countries and cities were already facing mounting water challenges with, in Sub-Saharan Africa only, 418 million people lacking basic access to water supply and 717 million to sanitation, in addition to concomitant floods, droughts and pollution issues. Megatrends related to climate change, urbanisation and population growth add more pressure on water resources and require urgent attention for African cities to cope with future water challenges. Building on a Survey on Water Governance across 36 cities of all size in Africa, this report provides a regional overview of the allocation of roles and responsibilities for water management, the existence and implementation of institutional, policy and regulatory frameworks, as well as the critical governance gaps that need to be bridged in order to boost city government capacity to drive water security in the continent.

Coping with increasing water demand of rapidly-growing cities in Sub-Saharan Africa will require new and innovative planning and management solutions. This book presents Integrated Urban Water Management, an innovative and holistic approach for all components of the urban water cycle to better adapt to current and future urban water challenges.

This book is about the process of water management decentralization in African countries, which is seen as a means of advancing river basin management at the lowest appropriate level. There are very different stages of implementing decentralization in practice. This called for research aiming to understand the following questions: (i) why do some water agencies succeed more than others? (ii) What are the variables involved in such reform process? (iii) which variables have a positive or a negative impact on the implementation of decentralization processes? (iv) Which variables could be affected by policy interventions, and how? This study aimed to answer these questions through the following objectives: (i) analyze the factors that have potentially affected the results of decentralization process in SSA basins, and (ii) analyze the performance of decentralization process in SSA basins. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The main findings are that water scarcity is a major stimulus to reform; water user associations, if not well prepared and trained, may deter the decentralization process; and being part of an existing treaty over an international basin helps foster the process. Conditions improving decentralization performance include: scarcity of water resources, longer period of implementation, bottom-up creation, and appropriate budgetary support.

This book explores water service provisions of the urban poor in the cities of Africa with particular emphasis on Kenya and its capital city of Nairobi. In particular the book addresses the insecurity of tenure, and how the colonial segregation of land continues to shape water access and service provision even today in Nairobi. The book seeks to understand how urban water management entails the “production of thirst” among the urban poor and documents how cultural norms, political commitments and seemingly mundane practices of water managers combine to exclude the poor from accessing water. Supporters of privatization argue that private companies may succeed where governments have failed in supplying water to the urban poor. The author takes a closer look at this argument, demonstrating the limitations of some of the current reforms whilst also exploring alternatives and solutions. This book will be an invaluable reference for students, researchers and practitioners working in this field.