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Rapid urbanization in many African cities has had a significant impact on the basic water services in peri-urban areas, where providing services can be complex. In the city of Maputo, Mozambique, the initial uptake of new household connections following network construction in peri-urban areas was slow. Focus group discussions with residents and interviews with key actors revealed the importance of offering flexible payment options to the urban poor in order to increase the affordability of connection charges. Although the high connection fee was a constraint, residents were willing to pay if the charges were spread across several monthly installments. These findings suggest that flexible payment arrangements for customers can both bring utility services within reach of low income households and expand the customer base for utility service providers.

Convenient access to safe water is central to human health and development. Water-borne disease remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity in the world, much of which could be eliminated by a combination of better water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH). The WHO estimates that around 502 000 deaths a year in low and middle income countries from diarrheal disease are attributable to unsafe water, and that over 1 000 children under 5 die each day from diarrheal disease caused by inadequate WASH. UNWomen estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, women and girls spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water, the time valued at around $20 billion a year. Sustainable development goal no. 6 ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ creates a framework for tackling the challenge of mobilizing the large investments required and making WaSH available at affordable prices. The purpose of the study on which this report is based is to analyze, capture and synthesize lessons learned from closed GPOBA water projects in order to evaluate the impact of the subsidy schemes and inform the scale-up and replication of OBA approaches. These lessons offer insight to successes and failures of project design and implementation as well as solutions to more complex projects and/or less tested environments.

This synthesis report details the process, outputs and intermediate outcomes of the Water and Sanitation Program - World Bank (WSP) Technical Assistance (TA) to Service Level Benchmarking, Citizen Voice and Performance Improvement Strategies in Urban Water Supply and Sanitation (UWSS) in India. This technical assistance (TA) sought to strengthen accountability for service outcomes in urban water and sanitation, by providing support for strengthening (i) supply and demand side monitoring processes under national programs, and (ii) integrating use of performance data into decision making by public providers in select states, with specific focus on services to the poor. This TA was a continuation of WSP’s past technical assistance to the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) on adoption of benchmarking and accountability processes for the urban water supply and sanitation sector. During the period 2008-12, WSP had extended support to MoUD for development of the Handbook on Service Level Benchmarks (SLB), implementation of a national pilot followed by its rollout across the country. This TA was designed to provide follow up support for deepening of these performance monitoring and reporting processes, and activate demand side monitoring mechanisms to strengthen accountability. This TA has contributed to the following outcomes: (a) Demonstrated an innovative approach for ICT-based citizen feedback processes (“SLB Connect”) which has been leveraged for conduct of city level ratings under a national urban program, informed preparation of city level service improvement plans, and been integrated in the design of a Bank funded project. (b) Strengthened use of performance data for planning and investment processes in one state including development of a prioritization framework to guide allocations. (c) Supported analytical work and advocacy for strengthening of performance monitoring processes at the national and state levels. Going forward, in the Indian context, it would be important to operationalize the National Performance Monitoring Cell (NPMC) at the earliest, so that it can further strengthen performance monitoring processes in the sector.

This report, developed for policy makers and sector development partners, highlights the manner in which the domestic private sector is successfully participating in the delivery of water and sanitation services in Niger. It outlines the factors for success as well as the challenges that need to be addressed to harness private sector resources and motivation for improved and sustainable services.There is a need to further strengthen the capacities of various rural water supply stakeholders, particularly communes, which contract and supervise the work of the operators. The capacities of operators and users’ associations also need to be developed to pursue ensure the operational sustainability of the systems.The technical assistance (TA) described in this Note has, over the past five years, supported the sector’s stakeholders’ efforts to work in synergy to foster the participation of domestic private entities in the management of rural water supply systems (RWSSs).The purpose of the TA hasbeen to ensure improved operational policy applicationof the PPP frameworks in the context of water supplyand urban sanitation in rural and small towns , which hasnot evolved much over time in relation to urban waterservices. The TA program consisted of training activities,market assessments, and options development studiesto inform decision-making and consensus-building ofdifferent stakeholders on resolving some challenges facingthese subsectors.Opportunities exist for the Government to promote the emerging domestic private operators with a view to raising their level of professionalism for better service delivery.

With the exception of Myanmar, Cambodia has the lowest access to piped water supply in the South East Asia region, which was estimated to be 21 percent in 2015. Less than one in ten rural households (7 percent) have access to piped water services on their premises, while for urban households, three out of four households enjoy these services (75 percent) (WHO and UNICEF, 2015). Against this backdrop, the Government of Cambodia in its National Strategic Development Plan 2014-2018 (Royal Government of Cambodia, 2013) prioritizes the acceleration of access to piped water services, in partnership with the domestic private sector. Private water operators are licensed and regulated by the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft (MIH). Scarce public domestic financial resources are solely channeled to state-owned utilities and enforcement of regulations is generally weak. With the exception of the French Development Agency (AFD), most development partners focus their grant and lending support on public utility investments. In 2012 the private sector is already estimated to provide 1.4 million Cambodians with piped water services, with the immediate potential for expansion of existing schemes covering another 2 million and further new schemes that could viably be developed for another 3 million Cambodians (Sy, Warner, & Jamieson, 2014) and ( (DFAT, 2014). Around 300 private sector utilities, around half of which are licensed by the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft (MIH), have a market share of almost 50 percent of those with access to piped services, mostly situated in rural towns and agglomerations of settlements, with 750 to over 3000 household connections. Driven by demand for higher services, the private sector in Cambodia will be an important driver for increasing access to piped water supply, especially in the rapidly urbanizing rural growth centers of Cambodia.

Provision of safe drinking water is a basic necessity and has been a major topic for key political discourses in the country over the last decade. The Government of India has been focusing on safe drinking water since 1972-73 when it introduced the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Program (ARWSP) to assist States and Union Territories to accelerate the coverage of drinking water in the country. Despite increased outlays since then, access to safe drinking water in India remains a challenge. Apart from access, water quality and sustainability of resources (water points and infrastructure developed) are issues of major concern. The National Rural Drinking Water Program (NRDWP), which is supplementing the efforts of the State Governments by providing technical and financial assistance, is looking at rural drinking water from a holistic viewpoint. The Ministry has shifted its focus from hand pumps to piped water supply systems with the aim of providing monitored clean water and is focusing on those States which have low levels of piped water supply. The Water and Sanitation Program has compiled an excellent collection of success stories and best practices from the States of Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Punjab and Uttarakhand which address these key constraints. Some of these success stories, such as the Asoga village intervention in Karnataka which showcases a unique demand driven approach to facilitate participatory decision making leading to community ownership, the Bidholi piped water supply scheme in Uttarakhand which manages and recovers 100 per cent operation and maintenance costs from the community, the Shikayat Nivaran Kendra experiment in Punjab which uses information technology for online web enabled centralised complaint redressal and the Water and Sanitation Management Organisation experiment in Gujarat where the registered body acts as a facilitator in developing water and sanitation facilities owned and managed by communities, are all outstanding examples of how to address various challenges and shortcomings the program is facing.

Urbanization is occurring rapidly in Melanesia at 3-4 percent per annum. Due to unaffordable land and housing in formal urban areas, new migrants settle on marginal land without formal legal titles (‘informal settlements’). These settlements are growing and new settlements are emerging within and on the outskirts of towns and cities across Melanesia, at a rate that outpaces efforts to serve them. Settlements in the Melanesian capitals of Suva, Port Vila, Honiara, and Port Moresby comprise 20 percent-45 percent of the city population and at current urbanization rates will be between 30 percent and 65 percent by 2023. Information about informal settlements is scarce. This report provides a rapid review of water and sanitation services in the informal settlements in and around the capital cities of Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea.

According to the latest census of 2011, the urbanization level in India has increased from 27.8 percent in 2001 to 31.2 percent in 2011, and for the first time, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded the increase in rural population. India has different administrative arrangements for rural and urban areas, which are based on the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India respectively. Since the census towns (CTs) continue to be governed by rural administrative arrangements this situation raises an additional set of questions, in addition to the nature of economic transformation, related to the trade-offs-between rural and urban status. The report shall try and find answers to the following questions: (a) how does their governance affect the settlements economically and spatially?; (b) what underpins the economic dynamics of these settlements?; and (c) what are the drivers of change in land use and what relationships, if any, are there between agglomeration of settlements and economic and social and governance processes? The report is organized into two main parts. The first part provides a reading of the existing literature on small towns along the three main axis of research: governance, employment, and spatial change. It also provides a detailed rationale for the choice of sites and expands on the methodology chosen. The second part constitutes of four sections: (i) the first considers the CT as a liminal notion, enabling to unpack ones reading of urbanization; (ii) the second is concerned with the shift towards non-farm employment, the reality (or not) of sectoral differentiation in CTs, and the analysis of the new types of jobs existing in the towns; (iii) the third is concerned with the existing debates and practices around the idea that some CTs should become statutory towns; and (iv) the fourth looks at the various urban services and attempts to assess which variations (rural and urban; state) explain differences in services.

This note explores the Bangladesh experience in implementing the widespread use of a private operator model for building and operating rural piped water schemes. Since the early 1990s, the World Bank has, through a series of development projects, designed, piloted, and attempted to scale up use of the model as a mechanisms to address the very real issues of arsenic contamination and delivery at scale. The latest of these projects is still in implementation. The experience with these projects to date has been disappointing, and while a limited number of schemes are still in operation, the model has not been replicated in a large number of communities as intended and has not proved to be particularly sustainable. Over this same period, the government and other development partners also have been using alternative methods to deliver the same kinds of services in rural areas. Some of these efforts seem to have been modestly successful. However, much of the evidence about the performance of these other models is anecdotal and there has been little rigorous analysis to compare the performance of these different models with the private sponsor approach. This paper attempts to do this on the basis of a desk review of existing World Bank literature, including project documents and research reports, coupled with interviews with key stakeholders and World Bank staff. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the rationale and key issues associated with efforts to scale up a private operator model in Bangladesh. The second section reviews government efforts and those of its other development partners, to use a more traditional mode of service provision, involving community management. The third, fourth, and fifth sections review efforts by the government and the World Bank to design, test, and scale up a private operator model for service provision. A sixth section reviews some of the international research that provides insights into the use of such models in other countries and sectors. The paper ends with tentative conclusions about the experience in Bangladesh, lessons learned, and several options for further analysis.

This paper is organized into three main sections. Section one presents the background, objectives, scope, and limitations of the study. It also provides a general definition of OM and presents prototypical OM arrangements for rural CDD and community-based subprojects. Section two presents the detailed case studies for the seven selected projects. Section three summarizes the conclusions from the review and recommends steps for moving ahead. Five annexes provide extra background information, including the complete list of projects from which the seven main case studies were selected, as well as: examples of maintenance requirements for rural infrastructure; considerations for task teams planning for OM design and implementation; sample OM measures and timelines; and links to OM materials.

In order to evaluate the sustainability of services in the region, an overall sector maturity assessment was done taking into account four main dimensions: access to services, quality of services, efficiency of services, and financing of services. Each of these dimensions is measured through three simple and objective indicators. For each indicator, best practice values are established by looking at the best performers in the region, and countries closest to those best performers are deemed to have a more mature sector. A more complete description of the methodology to assess sector maturity is included in the annex of the state of the sector Regional Report from the Danube Water Program. The outcomes of this assessment for the Bosnia and Herzegovina water sector are displayed in Figure 10, which also shows average and best practices in the Danube region. The BiH sector maturity score is 57, which is close to the Danube average maturity of 64. The assessment shows that, on average, the country performs well in terms of access to piped water and flush toilets, and customer satisfaction. With regard to the BiH water sector, the main deficiencies identified through the sector maturity assessment are level of investment, staffing level, and wastewater treatment coverage.

Nigeria has enough surface and ground water to meet domestic demand, but as of 2004 half of its urban population did not have access to piped water. And for those who did have access, water taps flowed only a few hours a day. Rapid urban population growth of 5.7 percent per year heightened the difficulties faced by State Water Agencies (SWAs) in meeting the need for piped water and expanding production capacity. Poorly maintained and aging pipes were subject to frequent leakages, and some newly built pipes carried no water owing to intermittent power supply. Nigeria’s water sector performance contrasts with that of smaller countries in West Africa, such as Niger and Burkina Faso, which, with fewer resources, have undergone major institutional reforms and made significant progress in the urban water sector. The case study is part of a series on Doing Development Differently in Nigeria. This series seeks to support the World Bank’s Nigeria country team in strengthening its effectiveness by tailoring interventions to the local context using World Bank support to leverage system wide change and systematically learn by doing. This case study is also part of the Science of Delivery case study program that is contributing to the Global Delivery Initiative’s Library of Delivery Case Studies. The Global Delivery Initiative is collaboration across the international development community to forge a new frontier in development efforts worldwide.

In recent decades, many countries have embarked on structural reform programs involving private sector participation (PSP) across the entire value chain of the power sector. Often as part of a broader market oriented reform program, governments have resorted to PSP in transmission and distribution (T and D) for a variety of reasons, including to: (i) offset years of underinvestment and poor operating performance under public ownership; (ii) attract considerable private investment to fill the financing gap stemming from new T and D additions amid rapidly growing demand for electricity; and (iii) raise fiscal revenues by offloading state assets. In some cases (for example, Brazil and Peru), a prolonged electricity supply crisis prompted government into structural reforms of the T and D sector. The energy sector management assistance program (ESMAP) study covers PSP in transmission, as well as distribution. The four case-study countries, Brazil, Peru, Philippines, and Turkey were selected based on the substantial transmission story under their broader electricity PSP experience.

This document aims to share lessons learned from the implementation of the World Bank financed component of the rural water supply and sanitation project (EPAR) in the Sud region after its final evaluation. Leading the reform of the drinking water and sanitation sector in Haiti, the EPAR of the National Directorate of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DINEPA) involved the construction or rehabilitation of drinking water schemes in small towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants in the Sud region. As a result of the project, there will be a real and sustainable increase in the water supply to Haiti’s populations of benefitting communities of the Sud region, thus providing improved access for most households. A long-term solution must be implemented in order to make the meters more affordable to the operators and thus enable them to continue expanding their customer base.

The Government of Peru is committed to improving rural electrification coverage, aiming to increase rural coverage from an estimated 55 percent at the end of 2010 to 88 percent by 2020. To achieve this goal, the Directorate General of Rural Electrification (DGER) of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) has been implementing and executing the National Plan for Rural Electrification, prepared annually, based on the 2006 Rural Electrification Law, to extend service and attract participation of the population, local governments and electricity distribution companies. Within this program, the World Bank (WB) and Global Environmental Facility (GEF) are supporting the Directorate of Competitive Funds (DFC) of the DGER in the implementation and execution of the Rural Electrification (RE) Project, initiated in July 2006 and the Second Rural Electrification Project initiated in July 2011, to assist electricity distribution companies to implement rural electrification. Among the activities underway in the first RE Project is the implementation of a pilot program to develop the productive use of electricity, promoting opportunities for income generation in rural areas. This report provides an early assessment of the productive uses of electricity in Peru under the RE Project.

Water, as a resource, is integral to human activities of all kinds. The water sector, as a society's means of ensuring individuals have sufficient water is fundamental to recovery and development. While designing and implementing water supply operations in any societal context is a complicated endeavor, doing so in contexts affected by conflict, fragility and violence is inherently associated with compounded challenges. The objective of this study is to summarize operational lessons from task teams to inform effective water supply and access operations in conflict-affected and fragile situations. This paper defines common operational challenges and describes actions that task teams have taken in Bank projects in order to address those challenges. Further, the paper explores ways to ensure that water supply projects in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) contexts, in addition to achieving technical objectives, can also address perpetual causes of conflict and fragility. The risks of escalating violence and decreasing stability are exacerbated in situations where access to water resources and services is poor, constrained, inequitable, and unsustainable. This knowledge product summarizes lessons from World Bank task teams that have prepared and implemented water supply projects in locations affected by conflict, fragility and violence. The findings intend to support operational problem-solving during water operations that are conducted in these situations. The study engaged task team members and surveyed project documentation, consolidating data on contextual and operational challenges and responsive methods that staff recommend. The findings of this study show that clear priorities in process and organizational capacity, with a focus on access, are needed to ensure that water supply operations in FCS contexts are conflict-sensitive.