Public Private Partnerships and the Poor in Water and Sanitation

A new project funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) Infrastructure and Urban Development Department.

Project Team:

Project Management by WEDC, Loughborough University UK.

Project Purpose:
To determine workable processes whereby the needs of the poor are promoted in strategies which encourage public-private partnerships in the provision of water and sanitation services.

Project Duration:
June 1999 - March 2003.

Why we are doing this project?
Many bilateral and multilateral agencies are strongly advocating involvement of the private sector through public-private partnerships as a means of delivering better water and sanitation services. At the same time, these agencies require their programmes to have a clear poverty focus. PPP arrangements are now being implemented and proposed in low-income as well as middle-income countries. The number of poor people affected by such arrangements is growing and there is a need to establish the conditions under which they are likely to benefit. This will assist donors to focus their support. Many PPP arrangements concern water supply; given the crucial importance of sanitation in relation to the objectives of many donors, there is an urgent need to explore to what extent sanitation figures in PPP arrangements.

Focus of the Project:
The focal question to be addressed is how to develop and/or improve workable processes for provision of water supply and sanitation services to poor in Public Private Partnerships The work will centre on the distribution and collection end of the supply chain, close to final users. This is generally where obstacles to provision for the poor manifest themselves; there is scope for innovation and choice with respect to both the technologies available and the institutional and management arrangements adopted.

The key issue of concern in defining workable processes centres around organisational relationships between organisations which are qualitatively different. We expect to be concerned principally with relations between disparate organisations - e.g. local user associations and private firms, municipalities and vendors. We are less concerned with relations between two "formal" commercial providers, and with relations between different public sector authorities. Similarly, totally autonomous forms of provision (for example by community initiatives alone) are not a particular concern. The public sector (local authority or state) will feature in all cases, either directly (for example, as a regulator) or indirectly (for example, as principal where a commercial firm acts as an agent).

What we propose to do
The project will carry out a series of case studies involving both urban and rural situations to investigate different organisational relationships; these cases will investigate both successes and failures. A key feature of this work is the prominent role which our Southern partners will play in the planning, implementation and analysis of the case study material which forms the basis for developing the project outputs. The lessons learned will be developed into guiding principles which will assist in the establishment of PPP arrangements which are more inclusive, leading to better water and sanitation provision for the poor. This impacts particularly strongly on women and children by improving health and freeing-up time.

Where we will be working
The focus is quite wide in that it will include relevant experience from countries in South Asia, South East Asia, Southern Africa, Latin America.

What the work will produce:
The following are the proposed outputs

Spreading the word:
Dissemination will be mainstreamed into the project process. Post inception, we will develop a web page Public Private Partnerships & the Poor on the WEDC site, with links to other relevant institutions to allow a learning process throughout the project. This will be a shop window for on-going discussion and feedback on our case studies and draft outputs, to which you are invited to contribute. We will mount an email conference based on the draft final project outputs and use this as a review mechanism. Local workshops will be held in the focus regions throughout the project.

To find out more, please contact:
Dr. M.Sohail,
WEDC,
Loughborough University,
Leicestershire,
LE11 3TU,
UK

Tel: +44 1509 222885
Fax: +44 1509 211079
Email: M.Sohail@lboro.ac.uk

Updated 31/01/03

Maintained by f.o.odhiambo@lboro.ac.uk and j.fisher1@lboro.ac.uk