2 Field Note Rural Water Sector Water and Sanitation Program Reform in Ghana: An international A Major Change in partnership to help the poor gain sustained access to improved Policy and Structure water supply and sanitation services Africa Region Water, sanitation and hygiene are vital components of sustainable development and the alleviation of poverty. Across Africa, political leaders and sector specialists are generating new momentum in these important areas. This Field Note, together with the others in the same series, constitutes a timely contribution to that work. It is intended principally to help politicians, leaders and professionals in their activities. As the Water Ambassador for Africa, invited by the African Development Bank and endorsed by the African Water Task Force and the African Ministerial Summary Conference on Water (AMCOW), In little more than a decade Ghana has transformed the structure and strategy of its I commend it to your attention. rural water supply sector. In 1990 external support agencies, NGOs and a government parastatal organisation planned and constructed rural water supplies, and the parastatal was also responsible for maintaining them. By 2000, district assemblies and communities played a significant role in planning supplies, the private sector had become Salim Ahmed Salim active in drilling and other water supply services, and communities had full responsibility for Water Ambassador for Africa maintaining their supplies. The new policy and structure are attracting extra funds, and work is accelerating. This reform process started with an extended dialogue with the major stakeholders in the sector, out of which a new rural water and sanitation policy was developed. The policy was then implemented in several large pilot projects, supported by a number of external agencies, and finally the lessons from those projects were incorporated into the national programme itself. Both the policy and the process by which it was developed are of interest. Certain conditions specific to Ghana favoured the new policy, but other elements in Ghana's path to success are replicable. The latter include: the extended policy dialogue; pilot testing; the phased transfer of responsibilities to districts; and the involvement of NGOs and CBOs for community mobilisation. a parastatal organisation under the Ministry of Works and Housing, had official responsibility for urban and rural There is always water supply and sewerage. Most of GWSC's staff and resources, however, were devoted to the urban sector. With something new just two or three staff in GWSC headquarters handling rural supplies, decision making for the rural sector passed de out of Africa facto to the large regional projects financed by external PLINY support agencies. Construction The public sector also dominated construction. The vast majority of rural water supplies were boreholes fitted with hand-pumps. GWSC and the NGOs had their own rigs, and carried out most of the drilling in Ghana, while foreign Background: the Ghana contractors were brought in by some externally funded projects. Only one Ghanaian private drilling company rural water sector in 1990 existed. The lack of competition made drilling artificially expensive. In 1990, a borehole drilled in Ghana cost on average US$9,000 compared to an average of $3,000 in In 1990, the rural water sector in Ghana was typical of UK and USA. that in many African countries. The central government and external support agencies were responsible for Maintenance planning, construction and maintenance of rural water GWSC also had responsibility for maintaining the 8,600 supplies, with little involvement of the private sector except rural point sources, mostly hand-pumps, and the eighty for the foreign consulting firms hired to run projects and small-town piped schemes. In principle, GWSC sent out international contractors to drill boreholes. regional teams with trucks and district staff on motorbikes to maintain and repair the supplies. In practice, as few Administration and planning as 40% of the hand-pumps were working at any given The Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC), time, and the piped systems suffered frequent and 2 sometimes long supply interruptions. These problems communities accepted responsibility for operation and worsened as the number of supplies increased. One reason maintenance of their water supplies, including financing. was that GWSC focused its attention on urban supplies, Rather than wait for the government to send out a repair not rural. Also, GWSC collected only enough revenue from team, the communities would hire local hand-pump rural users to cover 10% of hand-pump maintenance costs mechanics to do the work. and 20% of the operation and maintenance costs for rural The Government of Ghana's own projects, supported by piped schemes. the World Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the German International Development The progress of Bank (KfW), Danish International Development Assistance (DANIDA) and other external support agencies, based new the sector by 2000 work on this policy. Through these projects, CWSA helped convert two and a half thousand existing hand-pumps to community-managed maintenance. A decade later, the structure of the rural water sector in Ghana had been transformed. The role of central The process of government had reduced and changed from controlling the planning, construction and maintenance to change in Ghana facilitating others to carry out these responsibilities. The private sector, district governments and communities had emerged as important players with primary responsibility for Ghana transformed its rural water sector through a planning and implementation, including the provision of limited step-by-step process that is still continuing. co-financingforconstructionandfullfinancingformaintenance. The policy development process Administrative changes The first stage spanned several years, from the late GWSC itself had been transformed in the process. 1980s through the early 1990s, as the government, external Responsibilities for rural supplies ­ defined as any support agencies and NGOs engaged in a consultative supply small enough to be managed by a community process about a new national policy for rural water supply. organisation ­ had been separated and were legally owned The World Bank and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) and managed by local government and communities, shepherded the process by commissioning a series of facilitated by the independent Community Water and background reports on the sector. These analyses fed into a Sanitation Agency (CWSA). In the process the government draft sector strategy that was discussed in a 1991 workshop had withdrawn from drilling; CWSA contracted with private by a range of sector specialists and representatives from firms for borehole siting, construction and supervision. organisations working in the sector in Ghana. In a further CWSA's other responsibilities included procurement and four workshops over the next year and a half, representatives setting standards. The same government act that from line ministries, local government, the private sector, established CWSA also transferred ownership and NGOs, external support agencies and civil society refined implementation responsibilities to districts and communities. the strategy. This broad participation gave all the groups a voice, while preventing any one group from derailing the The role of the private sector reform process in order to protect its own interests. The private sector had come into its own in more than The policy discussions also drew on the experiences just drilling. Private firms, individuals and non-governmental of pilot projects which were already under way. For and community-based organisations working under contract example, WSP worked with the government to test delivered most services. These ranged from latrine community-managed hand-pumps, the British NGO construction and hand-pump repair to community WaterAid tested community management of whole projects, mobilisation. Larger national NGOs were contracted and Catholic organisations were experimenting with to provide training and support to enable district NGOs community cash contributions. and CBOs to take on the new responsibilities. Elements of the new policy The role of the community · Administrative re-organisation. This policy dialogue and Finally, central government was withdrawing from experimentation culminated in a new national policy for maintenance work. In accordance with the national policy, rural water supply and sanitation. With the policy in place, 3 the next step was to base implementation on it. The major to fund sector element in this was the World Bank-supported Community investments in Water and Sanitation Project, a US$20 million programme targeted regions, managed by CWSA to implement the new policy in while DANIDA 26 districts (out of a total of 110 districts nationwide). and the World Under that project, the district assemblies and community Bank continue organisations constructed 1,288 water points and to support policy 29 piped schemes. work and capacity GHANA The project helped to establish CWSA as a competent building of all co-ordinator and facilitator of community-managed water s t a k e h o l d e r s supplies. First, the accounts and other functions related to throughout the community water supplies were placed in a separate division country. CWSA intends to move within GWSC. Later, in 1998, the division was made into to a compre- an independent agency. In the process, CWSA became a hensive sector- sector leader, hosting stakeholder consultations, policy and wide approach, which was the theme of the last annual project reviews, meetings with external support agencies review conference, held in March 2002. This approach and conferences. encourages all external support agencies to pool their · Delegation of responsibility. Another element in the resources to support a single national programme, rather national policy was the delegation of certain core than a series of separate projects. responsibilities to districts and communities, with support from CWSA's regional offices. Through the project, the district assemblies were in charge of processing and Analysis: factors that prioritising community applications for water supplies, favoured successful reform awarding contracts for hand-dug wells and latrine construction, and running the latrine subsidy programme. Communities, in order to be eligible for assistance, had to National and international trends favoured private- establish water committees (or boards in the case of piped sector involvement. The national mood in Ghana at supplies), complete plans detailing in particular how they the time favoured reform and innovation. In 1983 the would finance the supply, and contribute cash equivalent government had begun the Economic Recovery to 5% of the capital cost. In line with the new national Programme, its version of structural adjustment. The policy, communities also had to pay for all maintenance programme included promoting the private sector costs and find repair services on the private market. and making government more efficient. It had proved · Private-sector involvement. The final element of the a success and international praise poured in. The rural strategy was private-sector provision of goods and services water sector reform fitted well with the other changes to an unprecedented extent. In the four regions where the transforming the country. Community Water and Sanitation Project operated, CWSA The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation contracted the services of 4 drilling companies, 32 private Decade (1981-90) had been predicated on the idea that hand-dug well contractors, 3 piped scheme consulting firms, governments and external support agencies had the 481 household latrine artisans, 32 NGOs and CBOs responsibility to provide a minimum level of water supply contracted to handle community mobilisation, and several to as many people as possible as a matter of social good. national and international NGOs commissioned to build But problems during the Decade gradually led many capacity in district NGOs and CBOs. practitioners to see the provision of water as an economic good that could better be delivered by the private sector. Recent developments In that conceptual model, the sector agencies respond to That project ended in 2000, but is now being followed the demand of the users and provide the level of service by a nine-year World Bank-supported Adjustable Program for which they are willing to pay. In Ghana, therefore, these Loan project with a budget of US$80 million. The ideas fell on fertile ground, and it was one of the first African major objective of this project is to transfer responsibility countries to attempt to take to scale those new ideas about for all contracting from CWSA to districts and communities, a demand-responsive strategy. initially on a pilot basis in four regions. In addition, several There was an equitable balance of power between external support agencies are working through CWSA stakeholders. The conditions were also suitable for this major 4 institutional change because there was no significant Lessons from established rural water organisation strong enough to oppose such a change. In other countries, by contrast, external Ghana's experiences support agencies had encouraged the creation of national ministries of water which then resisted any subsequent initiatives to decentralise control to districts and The Ghanaian sector reform has progressed well for a communities, to let the private sector take over functions, variety of reasons. Some related to circumstances or to make implementation conditional on community cash unique to Ghana, but others can be copied and contributions to costs. adapted elsewhere. The latter category includes the All agencies supported decentralisation. The external following points: support agencies recognised that a centralised government- The timescale of several years spent on developing a run maintenance system could not maintain thousands of consensus built broad-based support for the new national boreholes spread throughout rural Ghana. CIDA and KfW, policy. The government did not try to rush the reforms in their projects, had already begun to look for ways to hastily. As to the bilateral agencies, they continued to fund decentralise maintenance to the communities. DANIDA, their own regional projects while incorporating principles which was just entering the sector, had a long-standing from the policy. Ghana began to create a national commitment to village level operation and maintenance. The new policy helped these external support agencies move programme through convergence. This is not to say the in the direction that they wished to go. Meanwhile, GWSC process has been without setbacks. Even today such basic realised that its own mission would be simplified, not aspects of a demand-responsive approach as the threatened, by turning over the point sources and small community cash contribution to capital costs are still being piped schemes to community management, and debated in Ghana. The financial sustainability of the new concentrating its efforts on the remaining big schemes. approach has not yet been conclusively established, and The structures for local and community management may not be for some years. However, Ghana did not suffer were already in place. National reform had included a from the debilitating debates over such points that have Decentralisation Act of 1983 that created and empowered affected community water supply programmes and slowed district assemblies, a process well under way by the time reforms elsewhere. the Community Water and Sanitation Project began. Thus Transferring responsibilities to districts in stages rather institutions existed to take on the responsibilities that than in a single step seems to be working well. The national policy had allocated to the local level. national policy, as well as the decentralisation reforms 5 more generally, set clear objectives for the district assemblies' and Water and Sanitation communities' roles, for Program-Africa Region (WSP-AF) example in contracting. However, there was a The World Bank, Hill Park, danger that the district Upper Hill, P.O. Box 30577, assemblies would not Nairobi, Kenya have been able to cope with all the responsibilities Phone: (254-2) 260300, 260400 at one time. During an Fax: (254-2) 260386 interim stage over the E-mail: wspaf@worldbank.org past few years, CWSA Web site: www.wsp.org therefore shouldered some of these res- ponsibilities. Now they are being passed on to the district assemblies and communities, with CWSA providing support and facilitation. The Community Water and Sanitation Project worked effect- ively and in a new way with NGOs and CBOs. The habitual approach to outside facilitation of community participation in much of Africa Acknowledgments has been to pay costs Written by: Elizabeth Kleemeier, with and allowances to particular thanks to Jennifer Sara Series Editor: Jon Lane government community development workers. The Ghana programme, by Assistant Editor: John Dawson contrast, paid lump sums to NGOs and CBOs on a contractual basis as they Published by: Vandana Mehra completed tasks. This represents the difference between paying for inputs and Photographs by: CWSA-Ghana paying for outputs. The former approach often seems to encourage government (PPPH-Ghana) and ?Curt Carnemark staff to make increasing demands for allowances and transport, with no Designed by: Write Media Printed by: PS Press Services Pvt. Ltd. corresponding efforts to show results. In Ghana, NGO supervisors and staff pushed themselves, even if resources were delayed, in order to get the job August 2002 done. For example, rather than using `no transport' as an excuse for failing to visit villages, the NGO and CBO staff bicycled, travelled by bus and even walked The Water and Sanitation Program is an to do their work. international partnership to help the The success of this approach was helped because national and international poor gain sustained access to improved NGOs were contracted to build the capacity of local-level NGOs and CBOs. water supply and sanitation services. Simply setting those organisations' incentives right is not enough; they need The Program's main funding partners are the Governments of Australia, some help in learning how to respond to those incentives. Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, CWSA was created as a facilitating agency rather than an implementer. France, Germany, Luxembourg, the CWSA, as a semi-autonomous public-sector agency, signs an annual performance Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, contract with the State Enterprise Commission. It is committed to staying efficient Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; and lean, below 200 staff, and highly decentralised to its ten regional offices. the United Nations Development The staff were also recruited on a competitive basis. Programme, and the World Bank. The World Bank does not accept responsibility for the views expressed herein, which are those of the author, and should not be attributed to the World Bank or its affiliated organisations. 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