Privatizing Ghana's water sector -interested parties and stakeholdersby Carolyne Dennis

The free-market model may be appropriate whenlooking at providing water to large cities, but is ita model possible to replicate in Africa's smalltowns and rural communities? And what are thealternatives?

Ghana's capital, Accra - however paltry thesupply in question. the transferral of provision tothe private sector will have huge implications.

THIS ARTICLE DOES not providedetails of a water-based technology, nordoes it introduce a particular way ofworking in the water sector. It focuseson the need to understand some wide-spread develo·pments in the water sectorin many countries, especially the privati-zation of water supply, which haveimportant implications for the provisionof water and sanitation. They also affectrelated issues such as the integration ofwater provision and health education,and the manner in which communitymanagement is introduced. At present,attention is focused on the objective oftransferring water supplies for largeurban centres from the public to the pri-vate sector, a process which is being

encouraged in many transitional anddeveloping countries by influentialdonors.

Every experience of the transition toprivatization is different, but there arelikely to be some similarities betweenthese experiences - and potentiallyuseful lessons to be learned from thedifferences. One peculiarity of thesituation in Ghana's small-town andrural water sector is the intensiveinvolvement of a large number ofdonors in the encouragement of thecontinued restructuring of the publicsector. This makes the views of therelevant donors of great importancebecause of their dual role in bothsetting priorities and in identifying thestrategies for their implementation.

Government anddonorsThe context within which thisprocess is taking place is thepressure from a combinationof donors to restructure thepublic utilities, especiallywater and electricity, and alsoto promote decentralizationand community participationin order to remove from cen-tral government what areregarded as inappropriateresponsibilities. But decentral-ization and privatization inthese circumstances can beinterpreted in many ways, ascan the irnportant issue ofidentifying the appropriateboundaries between publicand private responsibilities.

One consequence of theredefinition of the role ofcentral government and themove to different types ofdecentralization has been theemergence of the assumptionthat government departmentsare automatically less effec-tive than NGOs or the privatesector. More and more, this is

being interpreted to mean that, if it isnecessary for the provision or improve-ment of water supply to be combinedwith other activities such as health edu-cation or creating an increase in commu-nity management capacity, this shouldalso be undertaken by the NGO sector.

In establishing links with appropriateorganizations to undertake health edu-cation, Ghana's water providers havereceived funding on the condition thatthis should not involve a partnershipwith a government organization, forexample, relevant units in the Ministryof Health. This can lead to an apparentcontradiction between the activities ofa given donor in different sectors; takethe case of the UK's Department forInternational Development (DFID)project to improve the capacity of theHealth Education Unit of the Ministryof Health in Kumasi. The DFID-financed Two Regions Water Project inthis area has a health-education compo-nent, with the condition that this beprovided by appropriate GhanaianNGOs - and specifically not by theHealth Education Unit itself.

In the development and standardiza-tion of training and capacity buildingfor the management of water suppliesin the regions in which the World Bankand DFID are the major donors, amodel has been developed of encour-aging the creation of registered compa-nies. These are usually composed ofrecent male graduates who train andsupport community water committees,mainly consisting of older women. Thecompanies are often paid by results, interms of the number of water commit-tees they have trained and whether theyare operational; there appears to be noprovision for long-term support forthese committees.

The model being used is that of intro-ducing the discipline of the market intothis rather complex and contentious areaof rural water provision, thus avoidingany contact with the local offices ofGhana's Department of CommunityDevelopment. Could this be a deliberatemodel of training and institutional devel-opment rather than a pragmatic adaptionto local circumstances and generallyaccepted lack of capacity? Such a sugges-tion is supported by the fact that, inthe Eastern Region where DANIDA isthe dominant donor, the Department ofCommunity Development is being usedto train and support community watercommittees. It will be interesting to see

20 WATERLINES VOL. 16 NO.4 APRIL 1998

Waiting for water in north Ghana. Will the new district water and sanitationteams be able to effect more-sustainable rural systems?

how these various models will be incor-porated into the Community Water andSanitation Division I (now responsible forproviding water to rural communities andsmall towns) which has been hived offfrom the Ghana Water and SewerageCorporation.

Small-town water suppliesThe component of the water sector forwhich a donor-encouraged move to pri-vatization is likely to be most interest-ing is in the development of a strategyfor supplying water to small towns.The Government of Ghana has takenresponsibility for supplying water todistrict capitals and, as describedabove, the preferred model of waterprovision for rural communities iscommunity-managed supplies. Thisleaves the problem of supplying waterto those small urban centres which donot fit easily into these strategies.

One creative model to emerge isto make the supply of headwater(streams flowing from the sources of ariver) to these towns the responsibilityof the Ghana Water and Sewerage Cor-poration or its privatized successor.The town would be responsible forboth ensuring water-dues payment and

providing a link with the provider. It islikely that the district assemblies mighttake on this role as an extension oftheir responsibility for local develop-ment. State-provided services andinfrastructure are accountable to theelected assembly.

Imminent privatization throws up anumber of issues: how would a privateprovider be properly accountable to the

district assembly? And - even morechallenging - supposing the assemblyneeds to liaise with a foreign waterprovider? A more systemic point is thatthe whole debate about privatizationhas focused on the question of supply-ing water to Accra and Kumasi. It iswidely regarded as likely that supply-ing water to these cities will be cherry-picked by potential purchasers as being

Small-town and rural water provision in Ghanaby Stephen Nkansa Buabeng

Most Ghananians suffer from their country's imbalance in thelevels of water provision for urban and rural populations. Over 90per cent of the urban population (constituting only one-third ofthe total population) has access to potable water. For the ruralmajority, this figure drops to less than 40 per cent.' The situationin rural areas is exacerbated by poor-quality sources and irregularsupplies during the dry season.

In an attempt to redress this situation, the Government of Ghanahas decentralized the authority for local development. District assem-blies were formed in ]989, both to enable people to participate indecision-making, and to ensure better utilization and equity in the dis-tribution of national resources for development. The assemblies areresponsible for all planning and development within their jurisdiction;this encompasses providing schools, health facilities, markets, andwater and sanitation facilities. They have been given a high degree offinancial autonomy over funding supplied by locally generated rev-enue and from central government grants.

In harmony with this approach, there has been a recent shift ingovernment policy regarding water-supply provision in ruralareas. Previously, the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation(GWSC) was solely responsible for the development and opera-tion of water supply and sewerage systems in both urban andrural areas. Now, however, the rural water-supply divisionhas been separated from the GWSC and established as the Com-munity Water and Sanitation Division (CWSD). The CWSD'sremit is to work with rural communities with populations of lessthan 5000, and small towns with populations numbering between5000 and 15 000, while the focus of the GWSC has narrowed tothe provision of urban facilities on a commercial basis. These dis-tinctions are based on the expectation that urban dwellers are bet-ter able to pay for water than their rural counterparts, who need torely on government funding for the provision of facilities.

The roles for government, the community, the private sector

WATERLINES VOL. 16 NO.4 APRIL 1998

and NGOs are taking shape under this new scenario. Electedmembers of the district assembly serve as advocates for theircommunities and as promoters of projects amongst their con-stituencies. This is in marked contrast to the past when projectidentification was done in the national capital. The CWSD,through its regional offices, provides training and assistance tothe district assemblies to establish district water and sanitationteams, which are responsible for implementing projects at the dis-trict level. Individual communities are expected to apply for par-ticipation in the programme, choose the type of water-systemtechnology to be installed, and manage the systems themselves(including collecting revenue) through a community water andsanitation committee. The community is also expected to financeat least 5 per cent of the total cost of the system, to be paid incash or in kind on an instalment basis. Private commercia] orga-nizations and NGOs are responsible for community motivation,construction, and revenue collection where communities havecontracted with them to do so.

The scheme has only recently been implemented and it will takesome time before results can be monitored. Possible constraint~ on it~effectiveness include the lack of funding from donor agencies and thelack of human resources at the district level. Benefits anticipated inthe long term include the greater sustainability of rural water-supplysystems, increased local capacity for community management, cost-sharing between the community, district assembly, central govern-ment and external agencies, and more cost-effective provision ofgoods and services through use of the private sector.Reference1. Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation Corporate Plan, 1996-7.

Stephen Buabeng works for the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development atthe University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. He can becontacted by fax at: +23305160137 or by E-mail at: birr/ust@ighmail.com.

21

Fishing beneath the Akosombo dam on Ghana s Volta river in the east of the country.

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the only possible sources of profitableprivate water supply. The focus on thisissue has tended to marginalize thequestion of supplying water to smalltowns. The market model may be rele-vant to the provision of water to largecities but it is proving difficult toextend it to small towns and rural com-munities. The success of the decentral-ization process, and the substantiverole being played by the district assem-blies means, however, that there arepotentially interesting and creative pos-sibilities for the institutional arrange-ments for supplying water to smalltowFlS, which may be in danger ofbeing ignored or underestimated.

Providing adequate water supplies tosmall urban centres is an importantissue in many contexts, with questionsarising about the relevance of the twocurrently dominant strategies: privati-zation and NGO-sponsored communitymanagement of this sector. On theother hand, there is evidence of cre-ative and pragmatic thinking in relationto this important sector in differentsocial and economic contexts which isin danger of being relegated to the mar-gins of the water-provision debatebecause of the increasingly single-minded focus on the initiation andmanagement of privatization.

Stakeholders' friendsThe most significant - although intan-gible - effect of the numerous exam-ples of the preparation of Ghana'swater sector for privatization may behow it has affected on the professionalsconcerned, and the categories of theirnetworks and alliances. At the projectlevel and, increasingly for sectors as awhole, the need to identify primary and

secondary stakeholders is emphasized.Experience .in Ghana suggests that,once rumours about water-sector priva-tization start spreading, there is a con-stant shifting of the debate aroundwater, new alliances are made andexisting networks reinforce their posi-tions, as the various stakeholders repo-sition themselves. How important thevarious strands in this process will beis not immediately clear, but they dohave an effect on both the creation ofnew forms of consensus, and on simplecommon sense, within the sector, andthe priorities and strategies it suggestsas appropriate.

There is one element of this back-ground manoeuvring which might havean immediate influence on the mannerin which different components of thewater sector are understood and poli-cies developed. Professionals - in thiscase, water engineers - constitute aseries of interlocking networks whetherthey work for parastatals, donor agen-cies, or indigenous or foreign privatewater-construction and managementfirms. Once, again, personal observa-tion in Ghana - confirmed by evi-dence from other countries - suggeststhat the initiation of privatization leadsto an intensification of these networksas private water firms move towards a

more central role in water provision,thereby changing the map of stakehold-ers (clarify). This is likely to be mostevident in the many countries in whichthe move to privatization is associatedwith considerable donor influence.There is often some blurring of theboundaries between foreign-govern-ment and private intervention in thesecircumstances.

This emergence of the importance ofthe stakeholders' friends has differentimplications in different contexts. InGhana it appears to be leading to aneven greater emphasis on the expansionof the headwater supply of cities such asAccra and Kumasi, while the emphasison the development of appropriate deliv-ery systems and the implications of pric-ing issues for the water consumers ofthese cities is reduced. It has also tendedto displace and downgrade the issue ofsupplying water to small cities, and tomarginalize the Community Water andSanitation Division).

Ongoing concernsThis article raises more questions than itanswers - but these are increasinglyimportant questions for those concernedwith water supply. A few of the mostimportant questions which accompanythe rumours surrounding the initiation ofprivatization and its later implementa-tion are:• its effect on existing inter-depart-mental co-operation, especiallybetween health and water officials;• its effect on the models developedto implement the community manage-ment of rural water supply;• the issue of small-town watersupply, which sits uneasily betweenprivatizing large-scale schemes and com-munity-managed small-scale schemes;and• the manner in which professionalnetworks and stakeholders' friendsbecome even more important when pri-vatization is imminent, possibly influ-encing how challenges and issueswithin the sector are prioritized.

These issues are not comprehensive,and it will be important to construct thestory of privatization in other countries toidentify the effect it is having and is likelyto have on small-scale rural and urbanwater supplies. Exploring these concernswill help to build an understanding, bothof processes within the water sector, andof their impact on policies and strategies.This is a necessary step in order todevelop mcxlified and alternative policies,and fight for their adoption.

ReferenceI. Personal communication, Dr DenizKandiyolti, March ]997.

Carolyne Dennis is a Senior Lecturer at theDevelopment and Project Planning Centre at theUniversity of Bradford. She has workedextensively in Ghana and was recently involvedin an evaluation of a water project there. She canbe contacted at DPPC, Pemberton Building,University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 J DP,UK. Phone: +44 /274 233963; E-mail:c.j. dennis@bradford.ac.lIk.

22 WATERLINES VOL. 16 NO.4 APRIL 1998