options for water supply and sanitation

There are many options for water supply and sanitation in Africa discussed in the literature surrounding this thematic area. One of the options, advocated by Drangert et al. (2002) involves the management of both water sources and sanitation facilities and this paper suggest that when urban expansion occurs and cities begin to expand rapidly, management should go small. The paper argues that demography plays a crucial role and is a vital factor in the management of water and through this a model is developed to generate water management options relating to population growth. During times of rapid population growth social cohesion is low and public management is often poor, so therefore residents often take own-key actions to solve the problems and these can be defined as initiatives that are managed and controlled by local communities or individuals with local knowledge. Then as the population growth slows which will inevitably happen, social cohesion and public management will improve, therefore enriched infrastructure for water sources and sanitation can then be put in place.

I believe that the option in this paper, which is the use of a mixture of ‘own key’ and ‘turn key’ arrangements is a viable option. ‘Own key’ arrangements at the local level should be used during times of rapid population growth as local knowledge enable and help  to provide sanitation and water for the population as it is needed urgently and this is the quickest way to do this and during times of slow growth ‘turn-key’ arrangements should be used as external management can provide infrastructure when there is less demand for urgent sanitation and water sources. However, this will only occur if there is a good relationship between the local government or city council and the local communities.