Doing More with Less: Leveraging the Private Sector for Rural Water Supply in Benin
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Working together, IFC and the World Bank helped develop public-privatepartnerships (PPPs) to extend the water supply into rural areas of Benin. For the first time in Benin, bankable long-term commercial agreements allowed private operators to raise funding from local commercial banks to undertake the necessary investments. This SmartLesson offers a perspective on what it takes to design and implement sustainable rural water PPP projects, and shares the lessons learned during the project implementation process.
The project, designed as a pilot program, complemented WSP’s ongoing sector sup- port in the country. Ten pilot rural water supply systems were selected in three dif- ferent municipalities across the country and grouped into four clusters of two to three systems each. Each of the four clus- ters was tendered as a separate transac- tion by the respective municipalities. The tender process led to the award of four eight-year concession agreements for the design, partial financing, rehabilitation, extension, and operation of the 10 rural water systems to three winning bidders.
