Benin: Piped Water Supply Systems in Rural and Small Towns

In Benin, rural water systems had historically been operated by local communities, with varying degrees of success. In 2006, the Government of Benin (GoB) began to transfer the management of these water systems to private operators, under a lease/affermage arrangement to connect decentralized municipalities and small-scale private operators (POs). The number of piped water systems (PWS) managed through an affermage contract went from one in 2007 to 269 in 2014. These 269 PWS under affermage deliver water services to an estimated 1.7 million people (28 percent of the population). In 2010, the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) commissioned an assessment of the performance of the privately-run water systems which uncovered a number of shortcomings including the lack of capacity on the part of the local private operators, weak and short-term contracting arrangements, and challenges for all parties—private operators and municipal governments alike—in fulfilling their contractual obligations. To address these problems and strengthen the contractual framework, GoB solicited the assistance of the World Bank Group and the Dutch Cooperation (Netherlands Embassy in Benin) allocated up to $1 million in grant funding to reform rural water services in the country. IFC and WSP implemented four 8-year subsidized affermage contracts for 10 piped water systems in three different municipalities under three different private operators.