What enables or hinders public water utilities serving rural areas and small towns?
- Khuzwayo Tembo
- Sep 3
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 5
Introducing a multi-country study in Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia
Water utilities are essential institutions responsible for keeping millions of people supplied with safe water, a most basic human need. In the absence of clean and safe water, all investments in healthcare and education are compromised, and so the extent to which water utilities can operate effectively and efficiently is a matter of urgency. Working in a large urban water utility taught me a lot about the multi-dimensional challenges of providing water and sanitation services, and in a previous blog, I shared a summary of the unique difficulties faced by public water utilities. But discussions with representatives from small-town and rural utilities and organisations that support them always remind me that for many water utilities, especially those servicing smaller towns and predominantly rural districts, the situation is usually far more dire. Although this may be a somewhat superficial measure, the contrast becomes striking when one steps into the car park or office of a utility: in large urban operations, modern glass-fronted buildings and rows of newer vehicles are the norm, whereas in small-town and rural utilities, it is not uncommon to find aging and defaced office blocks alongside fleets of well-worn, decades-old trucks sitting on rocks. In some rural and small-town water utilities, staff are critically short on essential resources: vehicles for repairs are often broken down, salaries are sometimes months late, staff are chronically demotivated, spares and tools for operations and maintenance are limited, if available. These challenges are not unique to Zambia, where I started my career. I’ve seen them echoed across utilities in multiple countries within and outside Africa.
Let us step back for a moment. Rural water has been the domain of community-based management (CBM) for the better part of the last 40 years. In the late 20th century, in accordance with principles of decentralisation and community ownership, rural water service provision shifted from centralized government control to community-led management. The focus of community-based management was on local ownership. However, owing to the growing frustration with the chronically poor performance of inadequately supported CBM (poor maintenance
of infrastructure, low technical capacity of volunteers), water professionals have recognised that CBM alone in rural areas is not sufficient to meet global and national targets. This has on the one hand, expressed itself in a call for more private sector involvement, and on the other, led to a gradual return towards more centrally managed public utilities.
The latter, which is the focus of this blog, has been referred to as “utilitisation”, and is well documented in the 2021 IRC publication on utility-managed rural water services. And to briefly touch on the former, since it is relevant to the conversation, many questions are currently being asked about the extent to which efforts to advance private sector involvement in water supply and sanitation service provision over the last 30 years have yielded the promised results. The recent outrage on the failures of the fully privatised model in England and Wales has further shaken confidence, and at the very least, raised doubts on the extent to which private sector approaches hold the answer, least of all in rural and small-town contexts. Can lessons be learned from hybrid models such as in the Netherlands, where water utilities are state owned, but management is contracted to the private sector? Or from Brazil, where this informative piece by Joel Kolker highlights significant strides being made by private sector actors are playing a major role in service provision? Perhaps, but context must always be the key driver in these matters. This USAID-funded study found small performance differences among different service delivery models and concluded that outcomes were more closely linked to socio-economic context and specific service provider practices than to the model itself. Overall, we seem to be at a critical point where we must face the lessons learned over the last few decades and make some difficult choices.
Whether or not we agree that public utilities are the answer in rural areas and small towns, trends in sub-Saharan Africa are showing that public utilities are increasingly serving these contexts, and to varying extents, several governments are implementing policy, legal and regulatory reforms to expand utility mandates to cover these areas. In some countries, new rural-focused utilities have been established, notably in Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. In others, the mandate of existing urban utilities has been expanded to cover rural and small-town areas, such as in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Nonetheless, utility expansion into rural and small-town contexts is happening, and these utilities need just as much, if not more support. Various countries are at different stages of this process. Here are five examples:
Uganda has probably made the most progress amongst the five countries on this list, based on scale alone. The National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) has expanded beyond urban centres, but most small towns and rural areas are served by six Umbrella Water Authorities, which serve 599 gazetted water supply areas.
Ghana’s Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) transitioned from a facilitation role to directly managing rural service provision in 2017 and has already assumed direct management of services in 150 districts across 16 regions, currently managing over 192 schemes.
Zambia’s 11 regional utilities have been granted extended mandates to rural areas. Three utilities have progressed significantly to cover 54 service areas in rural areas serving about 105,800 people. Progress in the other eight utilities has been slow.
In Kenya, 91 water service providers (WSPs) are responsible for-service provision, with a blend of urban utilities expanding into rural areas and with new rural-focused providers being established. Typically, existing urban WSPs take up existing rural and small-town schemes.
Ethiopia is professionalizing some rural community-based groups into public utilities. The roll-out of these utilities is an ongoing process across the country, and some serve both urban and rural communities and populations between 1,000 and 100,000.
But what are the main drivers and barriers to utility service provision in rural areas and small towns? How are existing urban utilities coping or taking on these expanded mandates? How are new utilities performing in this challenging operational context?
A new study commissioned by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and managed by Aguaconsult, in collaboration with WSUP, WSUP Advisory, and Millennium Water Alliance, seeks to deepen our understanding of this trend across 21 water utilities across Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Zambia. The study will offer practical insights to stakeholders working to strengthen these utilities as their mandates grow. Cross-country research on public utilities expanding into and serving rural and small-town areas is limited, especially studies that assess performance, identify what helps or hinders the expansion process, and shares best practices and key considerations for this transition. This multi-country study fills that gap by exploring the key factors shaping utilities’ ability to expand into rural areas and small towns, highlighting lessons and successes, and offering clear recommendations and a roadmap for expanding utility service provision in rural areas.
