Many developing countries are about to prepare their new strategies on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for universal and equitable access to water and sanitation by 2030.These new roadmaps need to put a focus on rural growth centers and small towns where the majority of those without access to water and sanitation reside. In 2015, a third of the global rural population was living within the service area of a small piped water scheme mainly operated by water users association. These schemes are generally ill-maintained and ill-managed.

The toolkit is divided into six sections focusing on:

Section 1: How to use the Toolkit - This section provides an overview of the tool kit and how it can be applied.

Section 2: Introduction to the WSS sector and the need for Commercial Financing - This section provides a high level overview of the current operations in the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector in Kenya. The section also discusses how the sector has been traditionally financed and its current financing needs.

Over the past decade, the Government of Benin has made great strides to professionalize the management of piped water systems (PWS) in rural areas and small towns. Since 2007, the sector actively supported the implementation of public-private partnership (PPP) contracts for operating PWS. The sector introduced an affermage-type PPP model to connect decentralized municipalities and small-scale private operators (POs). The number of PWS managed through an affermage contract went from 1 in 2007 to 269 (57% of the total number of PWS) in 2014.

This sector note covers private participation in infrastructure (PPI) in low and middle income countries in 2015. The following trends stood out in 2015:

The objective of the present case study is to extract lessons from these pilots and the reforms implemented by the GoB for improving the sustainability of rural water services. These lessons are relevant for stakeholders involved in Benin rural water supply as well as for an international audience seeking to improve the delivery of water services in rural areas and small towns in other countries.

Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali is home to more than one million people, and the population is expected to grow significantly in the coming years due to a combination of migration from densely populated rural areas and the city’s rapid economic growth. The population expansion is placing a significant strain on Kigali’s infrastructure services, particularly in the water sector. In 2009, Rwanda’s official water coverage rate stood at 76 percent (with access defined as being within 200 meters of an improved water source), and only 30 percent of customers had household or yard connections.

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.

This note describes the potentially far-reaching reforms in rural water sector management carried out by the Government of Senegal, and provides an overview of the process that led to the establishment of a new institutional framework for the sector.

In the mid-2000s, a pioneering contract for privately operated water service in sections of Hubballi-Dharwad, Belagavi and Kalaburagi cities proved that 24/7 water service was possible in India. Until then, despite the availability of enough water, residents in the majority of Indian cities received water for only a couple of hours a day due to poor management, system leaks, and financial problems of utilities. That initiative, financed as part of a World Bank project, also showed that it was feasible to shift from flat rate to volumetric billing and to partner with the private sector.

Non-revenue water (NRW) management can deliver significant financial and economic benefits, and to a large extent, NRW programs can be self-financing—rapid revenue gains from commercial loss reduction, for example, can supply the OPEX and CAPEX funds needed to reduce the NRW.