Publication: Private Sector Participation in the Ugandan Water Sector : A Review of Ten Years of Private Management of Small Town Water Systems
Loading...
Published
2013-12
ISSN
Date
2014-04-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This working paper reviews the first decade (2001-11) of Uganda's pioneering private sector participation (PSP) model for small town water supply. The number of towns under the PSP model has steadily risen from only 15 in 2001-02 to over 90 in 2010-11 with a combined population of over 1.5 million. In evaluating the impact of this development, this working paper aims to guide further reform within Uganda, and to inform other countries considering similar PSP approaches. The core idea behind PSP centered reform in Uganda was to improve sustainability and efficiency of piped networks in small towns by hiring private operators (POs) for their commercial management. Driven by a profit motive, POs were expected to maximize revenue, minimize waste and maintain and expand networks in a sustainable manner. To guard social objectives, infrastructure remained under government ownership and the introduction of POs was accompanied by a complex regulation, as well as support, framework.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Hirn, Maximilian. 2013. Private Sector Participation in the Ugandan Water Sector : A Review of Ten Years of Private Management of Small Town Water Systems. Water and sanitation program working paper;WSP. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17748 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Zambia - Public Expenditure Review : Resource Allocations and Financial Flows in the Water Sector in Zambia(Washington, DC, 2012-01)Zambia initiated a series of reforms in the early 1990s aimed at increasing sustainable water supply and sanitation services. This was coupled with improving water resources management and enhancing contributions to economic growth and development. The reforms are embedded within seven sector principles that were articulated in the 1994 National Water Policy (NWP). The aim of the NWP was 'to promote sustainable water resources development with a view to facilitate an equitable provision of adequate quantity and quality of water for all competing groups of users at acceptable costs and ensuring security of supply under varying conditions.' The objective of this paper is to review the resource allocations and financial flows in the water sector. It is the first in a series of five policy papers that includes the following: resource allocations and financial flows in water sector; comparative analysis of opportunity costs of water supply in low cost and Peri-Urban areas; equity and efficiency of rural water supply support in Zambia; economic analysis of the impact of small dams on rural poverty in Zambia; and priority policy measures to improve public expenditures in water sector.Publication Better Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor : Good Practice from Sub-Saharan Africa(Kenya: European Communities and Water Utility Partnership, 2003-07)The document is structured in three parts covering the key thematic areas of water supply service delivery, sanitation service delivery, and overall policy. Each part describes a series of different actions that can be taken to improve service delivery to low-income communities, outlines key lessons and challenges and identifies the principles of good practice. This project is aimed at developing a better understanding of the conditions necessary for water and sanitation services to reach low-income communities. It sought to build on the knowledge and experience of the various actors currently involved in delivering or supporting these services. One of the main observations of the authors is that there is never just one solution to any particular problem. Within each country context, the key to a successful strategy lies in the capacity of practitioners working in the water and sanitation sector to innovate and to adapt solutions to address local constraints and opportunities. This document aims to: (i) describe the challenges facing service delivery to low-income urban communities; (ii) outline key principles that guide water and sanitation sector practitioners in the delivery of services to the urban poor; and (iii) provide tangible examples from a range of sub-saharan African countries to illustrate these principles and challenges.Publication India - Improving Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Services : Lessons from Business Plans for Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and International Good Practices(Washington, DC, 2012-07)The purpose of this report is to distill lessons learnt for improving Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) services in India, by reference to the recent WSS business plans prepared for the three states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Haryana and from various studies carried out by the World Bank on international good practices in urban water service delivery. The report culls out the core elements of the WSS reform program and proposes how such reforms might be implemented. The intended audience for this report is policy makers at the national and state levels, sector professionals and practitioners. The report identifies the key elements of a state-wide program for improving WSS services and accountability on the basis of the following three pillars: i) policies and institutions: appropriate policies and institutional arrangements that clarify the roles and responsibilities of key actors, and which create service providers that are efficient, accountable and customer focused with sufficient autonomy to manage their affairs in a professional manner; ii) infrastructure and financing: medium term infrastructure development program with appropriate financial frameworks that encourage service providers to rely increasingly on user fees and, later on, loans as their main sources of financing. Any subsidies within that framework should be provided in a targeted and transparent manner to support government policies; and iii) capacity building for professional services: ensuring well trained, knowledgeable and motivated staff to deliver the services in a high quality manner. To put the sector in context, the report begins by summarizing the results of various international studies undertaken over the last several years by the World Bank to better understand the makings of well run public WSS companies. These findings point towards the need to establish sectors which encourage the development of autonomous, accountable and customer oriented service providers. Within that framework the report provides suggestions on practical steps that can be taken by governments and service providers.Publication Africa - Ebbing Water, Surging Deficits : Urban Water Supply in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06)With only 56 percent of the population enjoying access to safe water, Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind other regions in terms of access to improved water sources. Based on present trends, it appears that the region is unlikely to meet the target of 75 percent access to improved water by 2015, as specified in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The welfare implications of safe water cannot be overstated. The estimated health and time-saving benefits of meeting the MDG goal are about 11 times as high as the associated costs. Monitoring the progress of infrastructure sectors such as water supply has been a significant by-product of the MDG, and serious attention and funding have been devoted in recent years to developing systems for monitoring and evaluating in developing countries. Piped water reaches more urban Africans than any other form of water supply-but not as large a share as it did in the early 1990s. The most recent available data for 32 countries suggests that some 39 percent of the urban population of Sub-Saharan Africa is connected to a piped network, compared with 50 percent in the early 1990s. Analysis suggests that the majority of those who lack access to utility water live too far away from the distribution network, although some fail to connect even when they live close by. Water-sector institutions follow no consistent pattern in Sub-Saharan Africa. Where service is centralized, a significant minority has chosen to combine power and water services into a single national multi-utility urban water sector reforms were carried out in the 1990s, with the aim of creating commercially oriented utilities and bringing the sector under formal regulation. One goal of the reforms was to attract private participation in the sector.Publication Water and Wastewater Services in the Danube Region(Washington, DC, 2015-05)This report analyzes the progress and challenges of 16 countries in the Danube watershed in delivering sustainable water and wastewater services to all, while meeting the European Union environmental acquis communautaire. After putting the services that are being delivered into context, the report analyzes the organization of services in the region and the level of access to services, that is, how well countries are doing in terms of providing access to water and wastewater services for the entire population. It then looks at the performance of the sector, including the quality of services provided and customer satisfaction with it. It also draws a picture of the efficiency of services, including whether they reflect accepted good practices. Finally, it analyzes the financing of services, looking at whether the financing of operation, maintenance, and investments is secured and affordable. The report draws largely from existing public data sources at the national and regional level, and consolidates them into a coherent, regional narrative, and analysis. The methods of analysis include horizontal comparisons among countries at a given point in time and trends within the countries or the region over a given period of time. Given shortcomings in the availability and comparability of data across 16 countries, the report seeks to encourage and inform a policy dialogue around sector challenges rather than provide a definitive set of policy recommendations.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Towards a National Jobs Strategy in Kuwait(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022)This report is one of the main deliverables outlined in the legal arrangement of September 10, 2019, between the General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development (GS-SCPD) in Kuwait and the World Bank. A separate overview report is also available. The social contract in Kuwait is at risk. Kuwaiti citizens are used to the state providing public sector jobs, free education, free healthcare, and subsidized fuel to all citizens. These benefits have been bought and paid for using Kuwait’s oil revenues, however, the sustainability of the social contract has been questioned by three mutually reinforcing challenges. First, oil demand is projected to steadily decline the next few decades. This decline is partly the result of changing consumer preferences away from carbon-based fuel sources, and partly the result of increasingly cost-effective alternative energy sources becoming available. Second, with mounting fiscal deficits, the size of the wage bill for the government is a growing concern. Third, the needs in the labor market will continue to grow as Kuwait’s population is young and growing. Central to these structural challenges are challenges to Kuwait’s labor market. A growing number of young Kuwaitis are entering the labor market with high expectations of well-paid, secure, public sector jobs. In the private sector, employers are dependent on low-cost and largely unskilled foreign workers. The 2019 COVID-19 global pandemic, which has led to an oil price crisis and a global economic slowdown, has intensified the debate surrounding jobs challenges in Kuwait. These jobs challenges need to be addressed to ensure the sustainability of the economic growth model and avoid major social disruption. The government has asked The World Bank for assistance to formulate a National Jobs Strategy to help confront these challenges, based on evidence and best practices. Reforms are recommended in four areas, or pillars: (i) make the public sector more sustainable, (ii) improve human capital, (iii) support private sector growth, and (iv) build a social protection system. In addition, the jobs strategy covers two cross-cutting themes: behavioral economics, and monitoring and evaluation, also embedded in the four pillars. This introduction briefly explains the critical challenges facing Kuwait that require substantial changes in policy. The subsequent sections analyze the major issues of these four topics, with recommendations for policy change to improve sustainability and enhance incomes.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Applying Machine Learning and Geolocation Techniques to Social Media Data (Twitter) to Develop a Resource for Urban Planning(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12)With all the recent attention focused on big data, it is easy to overlook that basic vital statistics remain difficult to obtain in most of the world. This project set out to test whether an openly available dataset (Twitter) could be transformed into a resource for urban planning and development. The hypothesis is tested by creating road traffic crash location data, which are scarce in most resource-poor environments but essential for addressing the number one cause of mortality for children over age five and young adults. The research project scraped 874,588 traffic-related tweets in Nairobi, Kenya, applied a machine learning model to capture the occurrence of a crash, and developed an improved geoparsing algorithm to identify its location. The project geolocated 32,991 crash reports in Twitter for 2012-20 and clustered them into 22,872 unique crashes to produce one of the first crash maps for Nairobi. A motorcycle delivery service was dispatched in real-time to verify a subset of crashes, showing 92 percent accuracy. Using a spatial clustering algorithm, portions of the road network (less than 1 percent) were identified where 50 percent of the geolocated crashes occurred. Even with limitations in the representativeness of the data, the results can provide urban planners useful information to target road safety improvements where resources are limited.Publication Review of Urban Air Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa Region(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012)In Africa, urban outdoor air pollution is responsible for an estimated 49,000 premature deaths annually with indoor use of solid fuels being responsible for eight times this value, the main burden being borne by Sub Saharan African countries. Air pollution, outdoor and indoor, affects the health and life chances of millions of people in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA)every day. There is a link between air pollution and poverty since poor people are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollutants and tend to suffer disproportionately from the effects of deteriorating air quality (AQ). Children in cities exposed to high concentrations of air pollutants will more often develop respiratory ailments which prevent them from developing and learning well. As a consequence they will suffer in adult life from low levels of qualifications and skills. The implication of poorly educated children is not only a reduction of quality of their lives but also an obstacle for the economic development of a country as a whole. Rapid urbanization means increase in motorization and economic activity which in turn leads to increased air pollution if countermeasures are not taken. In view these linkages addressing urban AQ in SSA is particularly important. Air pollution in Sub Saharan cities appears to be on the rise with respect to many key pollutants. In some cities where monitoring has been performed levels of air pollution exceed World Health Organization recommended guidelines. The main cause of urban air pollution is the use of fossil fuels in transport, power generation, industry and domestic sectors. In addition, the burning of firewood, agricultural and animal waste also contributes to pollution levels. Pollutant emissions have direct and indirect effects with a wide range of impacts on human health, ecosystems, agriculture and materials. There is a growing need to determine the state of urban AQ and the challenges posed to solve it and identify the most effective measures to protect human health and the environment. Learning from experience and successes in urban AQ management (AQM) from other countries can assists in the formulation and implementation of strategies to achieve better AQ in Sub Saharan Africa. This report compiles the information provided by the 25countries in a harmonized way and gives an in-depth review of AQ in SSA with AQ profile of each country, presenting the country's main current urban AQ issues, emissions standards, ongoing projects, lessons learned from good/bad practices. It was attempted to compile this information also for additional SSA countries from available publications and internet sources.