GHANA: Strengthening Private Sector Participation in Community Water Supply

Estimates from Ghana’s Community Water and Sanitation Agency and Ghana Water Company Limited indicate that about 8.3 million Ghanaians lack access to basic water services, the majority of whom live in rural areas and small towns. The number of Ghanaians without water access jumps to 23.1 million if measured against the higher benchmark of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.14. This shift is of particular importance, as it significantly impacts the funding required to achieve universal access. To provide basic coverage for all by 2025, as outlined in the Ghana Government’s Water Sector Strategic Development Plan, requires a capital investment of USD 327 million a year between now and 2025.
Government alone cannot meet this funding gap and has expressed willingness to partner with the private sector, through its policies (e.g. National Water Policy) to meet the growing need for safely managed water. Nevertheless, partnerships with the private sector in community water supply are currently limited to delivery of goods, services and works, and to a limited extent, involvement in operation and maintenance of water systems through management contracts, with very little indication of longer term opportunities in infrastructure investment, technical services, distribution and providing value added services where private sector resources and capability could be leveraged.
In 2016, PPIAF approved a grant to help the Government identify factors and policies required to encourage public-private partnerships (PPPs) to accelerate delivery of safely managed water to rural areas, small towns and peri-urban areas (community water supply) and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal target 6.1 of universal access to safe and affordable water for Ghana. A number of elements that can strengthen Ghana’s policy on PPPs in community water supply were identified. These elements are categorized under 1) Policy Recommendations to Attract Private Sector Participation, 2) Guidelines and Operating Principles for Private Sector Engagement, and 3) Ghana Water Enterprise Trust
 This work builds on prior Sector Reviews including the 2013 “Ghana Market Assessment: Market-based Provision of Water at the Community Level,”1 2017 Ghana Sector Review: Scaling Small Water Enterprises2, previous assessments of strategies for developing, implementing, and sustaining the Ghana Water Enterprise Trust, and work completed by Safe Water Network’s Public Private Partnerships Working Group (now referred to as the Small Water Enterprise Working Group, the charter of which includes a focus on Public Private Partnerships3) in developing policy recommendations for increasing PPPs in community water supply in Ghana.