Is Community Management an Efficient and Effective Model of Public Service Delivery? Lessons from the Rural Water Supply Sector in Malawi

Abstract

SUMMARYReform of the rural water supply sector occurred widely in the 1990s, when many low-income countries replaced state-led service provision with decentralized community management in the hope of generating improved technical and financial performance. This article asks whether these expected benefits have materialized in practice, and whether community management has strengthened institutional capacity at local, district and national level. Findings from a mixed-methods study in four districts of Malawi show that both technical and financial performance under community management is weak. Maintenance is rarely done, repairs are slow and sub-standard, and user committees are unable to collect and save funds: Average savings are just 2% of expected levels. Despite these failures, community management has 'worked' for the state (and donors) as a means of offloading responsibility for public service provision. The article suggests elements of an alternative framework for rural water supply that would tackle the technical and financial failures of community management, and notes that efforts to promote 'local ownership' in development must be undertaken with care.

Using smart pumps to help deliver universal access to safe and affordable drinking water

“…In relation to water provision, an extensive study of 400 remote water points within Peru, Bolivia and Ghana (Whittington et al, 2008) indicated that, over a 3-year period, more than 50% of the surveyed water point communities received no visit, assistance or training from external support agencies. A more recent study conducted at 679 water points across Malawi (Chowns, 2015) reported very low levels of post-construction monitoring: 71% received none from the installer and 57% received none from any source. This study also highlighted that most communities with a broken-down water point had not reported it to anyone outside the village, despite this supposedly being a responsibility of the local government (Chowns, 2015).…”

“…A more recent study conducted at 679 water points across Malawi (Chowns, 2015) reported very low levels of post-construction monitoring: 71% received none from the installer and 57% received none from any source. This study also highlighted that most communities with a broken-down water point had not reported it to anyone outside the village, despite this supposedly being a responsibility of the local government (Chowns, 2015).…”

“…A number of previous studies (Baumann, 2006;Chowns, 2015;Harvey and Reed, 2007;Hope, 2015) have highlighted that the management issues associated with water projects in Africa are diverse and wide ranging. It is beyond the scope of this paper, and the expertise of its authors, to comment in detail on the optimal management structures for water services.…”

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“…10 Community management has been described as entailing both a shrinking of the state and a form of people's empowerment. 11 The success of community management has been questioned, and evidence suggests that it may work with external support, but is often unreliable in its absence. There are also concerns that it places a disproportionate burden on the poorest, in part because it is overwhelmingly used in rural areas, where a larger proportion of the population is poor.…”

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“…They frequently require unpaid volunteers in order to make them work (Roa & Brown, 2014). Chowns (2015) claims that in practice, they can sometimes be used as a means for the state to ignore its duty to provide water to rural areas under the logic that the communities are charged with the task of managing their own water. Strickland (2015) believes that community-based management programs in rural Colombia possess a number of different vulnerabilities that can place residents at risk of having to go without water.…”