Publication: Financial Services to Improve Access to Water and Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Date
2008-09
ISSN
Published
2008-09
Author(s)
Biesinger, Brigitte
Richter, Maren
Abstract
Achieving the millennium development
goals, particularly, reducing child mortality (the fourth),
and halving the proportion of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water (the seventh) requires
significant improvements in access to safe water and basic
sanitation. In Sub-Saharan Africa a water and sanitation
crisis looms. Forty-four percent of the population does not
have reliable access to safe water, and 63 percent remain
un-served by sanitation facilities. Income poverty is also
at a crisis stage. Some 72 percent of the population in
Africa lives on less than US$2 a day and 41 percent suffers
from extreme poverty on less than $1 a day. Despite the dire
need and consensus on the goals, public funds for water
supply and sanitation are drying up. Marrying the financial
with the water and sanitation sectors to make financial
services available to low-income households and small-scale
providers of water and sanitation services is a
market-driven, market-friendly approach to resolving the
credit constraint that is inhibiting the development of
water and sanitation infrastructure in Africa. Depending on
the situation, this approach: (1) promotes the provision of
financial services directly to low-income households in
order to enable their investment, (2) extends access to
water and sanitation services to poor households by making
financial instruments available to micro-, small-, and
medium-size private operators, and/or (3) targets public
funds more effectively to the extreme poor. Key strategies
are: 1) closing the information gap that exists between the
sectors at the policy and operational levels, and between
service users and service suppliers; 2) supporting
competition and financial viability in service provision in
addressing policy challenges; 3) financial broadening by
widening the range of financial products suitable for
small-scale water supply and sanitation; 4) financial
deepening by increasing the outreach and coverage of
financial institutions to small-scale service providers and
users; and 5) tight targeting of grant funding to the
extreme poor and low-potential areas, and separating it from loans.
Citation
“Biesinger, Brigitte; Richter, Maren. 2008. Financial Services to Improve Access to Water and Sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural and Rural Development Notes; No. 42. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/d6ca5772-00dc-5aa4-ba9b-fb213e4f1ed4 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”