Water supply governance in Accra: “authentic” or “symbolic”

Suleiman, Lina; Cars, Göran

doi:10.2166/wp.2009.162

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Ghana's urban water sector has been cast as a ‘socio‐technological regime’ whose current water policy treats water as both social and economic good . Institutional, social, political, and legislative constraints have historically inhibited Ghana's water sector and left about half of the urban population without access to piped water . Since the 1990s, Ghana has entered into different forms of public–private partnerships in urban water provision—most notably, the failed contractual arrangement with Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd. to operate the urban water supply from 2006 to 2011—with little success beyond what could have been achieved via an empowered public sector .…”

Section: Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

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From curiosity to commodity: a review of the evolution of sachet drinking water in West Africa

Stoler

2017

WIREs Water

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The private sector continues to play an important role in filling local drinking water supply gaps across the Global South. In West Africa, a perfect storm of rapid population growth, infrastructure mismanagement, and globalization of consumer markets has resulted in the advent of an entire new industry around packaged water, primarily ‘sachet water’ sold in mechanically sealed plastic sleeves. Most local governments and international development agencies have historically perceived sachet water as a passing trend, but it has quickly become a primary drinking water source for the majority of households in many urban areas and continues to spread throughout the region and world. Sachet water is now an important component of regional water security, although with attendant issues related to governance, quality control, environmental pollution, and social justice. This paper reviews the seminal literature on sachet water in West Africa, with particular emphasis on Ghana and Nigeria, where most studies have focused. This review synthesizes governance issues, consumer and industry trends, and the latest on product quality in the literature from 2011 to 2016, with 2010 approximating an inflection point for the modernization of the industry. The ability of many West African nations to achieve universal access to safe drinking water may depend on their willingness to understand and incorporate the sachet water industry into an integrated drinking water platform. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1206. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1206 This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of Water Human Water > Water Governance

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Section: Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Packaged water has been viewed as unregulated as recently as 2010 and is still considered more or less unregulated in countries where consumption has increased very recently, such as Sierra Leone . In some nations, the growth of new water markets has been cast as an opportunity in neoliberal terms.…”

Section: Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

From curiosity to commodity: a review of the evolution of sachet drinking water in West Africa

Stoler

2017

WIREs Water

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“…In 2010, four of these papers related to privatisation issues (Adinyira, Sohail et al 2010;Perard 2010;Schouten and van Dijk 2010;Suleiman and Cars 2010), two papers considered regulatory reform (Asquer 2010;Ehrhardt and Janson 2010) while Araral (2010) conducted a review of water sector reform experiences more broadly. Five papers focused upon regulatory reforms in individual countries: Mapedza and Geheb (2010) reviewed water sector reforms in Zimbabwe, Movik (2011) in South Africa, Tankha and Fuller (2010) in India and Brazil, Luzi (2010) in Egypt and Pearson and Collins (2010) in Australia.…”

Section: Institutional or Regulatory Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key issues and trends in the water policy literature

Chenoweth

2012

Water Policy

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Abstract:Content analysis of two complete years of articles published in the journal Water Policy show a wide spread of issues dominate the policy analysis discourse, with citations of the articles being spread across the thematic issues published. Few articles in the journal were particularly technical in nature but rather the journal has tended to published articles which are more directly linked to water policy. Articles related broadly to institutional and regulatory reform were numerically the most significant in terms of the published content of the journal. Examination of the short-term citation rate of articles published did not show a significant bias towards any thematic issue covered by the journal, suggesting broad interest in the wide range of topics relating to water policy issues.

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“…Before the water sector reform during 1993–94, the water supply and sanitation services were integrated under one national entity, the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation, and served approximately 370,000 water connections and 6–8 million people in the country's 10 political regions. Although water supply remained centralized, the responsibility for sanitation and wastewater management was decentralized (Suleiman & Cars, 2010). With this organizational model, there is the risk that the lack of integration will make it difficult to implement effective water pollution controls and ensure that the system is financially sound—an acute challenge for many developing and transitioning economies.…”

Section: The Iwrm Experience In Other Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integration of water and wastewater utilities

Katko¹,

Kurki²,

Juuti³

et al. 2010

Journal AWWA

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The concepts and principles associated with Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) have been around for many decades. The IWRM approach of merging water and wastewater utilities into a single organization has several advantages, particularly for larger urban areas. Not only can pipes for both services be laid in the same excavation, but human resources can also be conserved through cross‐training of water supply and wastewater services personnel. Although there are advantages, for a variety of reasons the concept has been slow to gain acceptance. Some of these reasons have to do with the approach to utility services in different countries; for example, in Germany wastewater services fall under the purview of the roads department. Utility services in Finland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, provide opportunities to study the implementation of IWRM on a wider scale. Certainly the mergers of water and wastewater utilities in these two countries have had their challenges. There has sometimes been little cooperation, and even a culture of rivalry between staff of the merged utilities. But more significant, there has been very little documentation about how the processes of separate utilities providing different services were actually merged. This article looks at what is known and what information is lacking about these types of mergers and suggests areas for additional study. The authors suggest that the lessons learned from the implementation of IWRM in Finland and Sweden have wider global applications as countries search for ways to incorporate greater efficiencies while working with increasingly limited resources.

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Water supply governance in Accra: “authentic” or “symbolic”

Cited by 7 publications

References 9 publications

From curiosity to commodity: a review of the evolution of sachet drinking water in West Africa

From curiosity to commodity: a review of the evolution of sachet drinking water in West Africa

Key issues and trends in the water policy literature

Integration of water and wastewater utilities

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