Alexander Danilenko

Performance of water utilities in Africa

Africa’s urban population is growing rapidly. Between 2000 and 2015, the urban population increased by more than 80 percent from 206 million to 373 million people. Although access to piped water increased over the period (from 82 million urban dwellers with piped water in 2000 to 124 million in 2015), African utilities were not able to keep up with the rapid urbanization as reflected in the decline of piped water as a primary source of water supply in percentage terms. The objective of this assessment is to inform Bank and government policies and projects on the drivers of utility performance. The report describes the main outcomes and lessons learned from the assessment that identified and analyzed the main features of water utility performance in Africa. The report includes the following chapters: chapter one gives introduction, chapter two describes the methodology used in the study, including details on the data collection process. In chapter three, the study team undertook a trend analysis of utility performance of the sector. Chapter four examines the efficiency of utilities using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) while also using an absolute performance approach. Chapter five investigates the effect of institutional factors on utility performance. Chapter six presents an econometric analysis of the drivers of utility performance, using various definitions of utility performance. The results from the econometric models are triangulated with a set of case studies of five utilities (Burkina Faso’s l’Office National de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement (ONEA), Cote d’Ivoire’s la societe de distribution d’eau de la Cote d’Ivoire (SODECI), Kenya’s Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), Senegal’s Senegalaise des Eaux (SDE), and Uganda’s National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), similar to those that the electricity study team undertook, which are presented in chapter seven. The report concludes in chapter eight with the lessons learned from the assessment.

State water agencies in Nigeria : a performance assessment

This document provides the government of Nigeria with a structured and coherent quantitative snapshot of the state of national urban water sector. The focus is on water provision by state water agencies (SWAs) or water boards which are the only regulated agencies that provide water to urban residents. Sanitation is not addressed because most SWAs do not provide this service. The main purpose of this quantitative assessment is to identify issues related to SWA performance, tariff levels and structures, and financing mechanisms and any concerns about their governance. To the extent possible, the document highlights how institutional weaknesses affect customer costs, subsidies to the sector, and the financing required to scale up investment and showcase how SWA operational and maintenance spending can actually be covered from the various financing sources. The report builds on a series of background studies, each looking at the water sector in Nigeria through a different lens: (1) assessment of SWA performance based on data from the international benchmarking network for water and sanitation utilities; (2) a tariff evaluation study; (3) an assessment of SWA governance; and (4) an economic assessment that reviewed how current services cope with costs and estimates of future costs associated with a reform directed to delivering services to all. The process followed and details of information collected and missing are thoroughly analyzed in the report and in the appendixes.