This field note reviews the first generation of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for small piped water schemes in seven countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda and Senegal. The field note proposes a framework for moving towards more sustainable piped water PPPs. The framework comprises four building blocks to consider: improving contracting practices, the enabling environment, the capacity of the PPP stakeholders, and information tools and services. 

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are common in the urban utility sector, but were first introduced into the rural water supply sector in the early 2000s as an alternative to the community-based management model, which, after 20 years as the prevailing arrangement for water service delivery, had fallen short in terms of meeting performance expectations especially for piped water systems.  

 

The introduction of public-private partnerships brought with it a framework to address key issues, such as asset ownership, performance monitoring, and regulation of water operators, which until then had remained unresolved in the rural and small-town water sub-sector. A significant number of rural and small-town water service delivery contracts have been put in place over the past few years, but little analytical work has been done to review this experience. This paper consolidates lessons from the first generation of publicprivate partnerships and identifies factors that are likely to contribute to the successful scaling up of delivery.

 

The observations made are based on a desk review of recent rural and small-town studies of public-private partnerships and on an overview of lessons from the implementation of the WSP Domestic Private Sector Participation activities in Africa since 2005. The study includes case studies from the following Western and Central Africa countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda and Senegal.