Securing Africa’s Future Water Needs

Pillar 4:

Institutions

Institutions manage water policy and decisionmaking. They build and operate infrastructure, collect and analyze information, and mobilize and allocate financial resources.

Water governance is a complex process in all countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, most water systems are managed by a mix of national, subnational, and local government institutions overseeing public utilities, traditional authorities or community-based management, and private sector actors.

The responsibility for managing water provision often falls upon complex institutional structures composed of multiple organizations, processes, and functions. This involves prioritizing and assigning roles, resources, and objectives across sectors, stakeholders, and scales.

But institutions managing watersheds, river basins, or groundwater aquifers do not typically align with the political boundaries of communities, countries, and government departments. Different ministries and authorities can have differing mandates for managing different water uses for agriculture, energy, or industry. Responsibilities and accountability can be overlapping, unclear, or contested, contributing to siloed policies and governance gaps.

Lack of coordination across differing scales, types of water use, and levels of governance can undermine resilience and generate adverse outcomes. In Ghana, for example, drought and climate stresses simultaneously strain household drinking water sources and rural agricultural production. Farmers deploy a variety of resilience strategies, including extending and intensifying irrigation. But uncoordinated increases in water use for crops can compete with the domestic needs of other consumers dependent upon the same water sources, spurring conflicts between households.

African decisionmakers universally identify institutional weaknesses and fragmentation as critical impediments to achieving water security.

Yet less than 16 percent of all global development assistance for water supply and sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa for 2002 to 2021 was directed to water sector policy, governance, and institutional capacity building.

Less than half of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have have realized significant implementation of integrated water resources management and few have achieved meaningful levels of engagement enabling consumers and communities to contribute to policymaking.

Resilience can be encouraged through establishing regular participatory platforms and processes for gathering water stakeholders across institutions and levels of governance.

Deliberate mechanisms such as water user associations, umbrella authorities, and water commissions can promote policy coherence. Structured procedures to share knowledge, align priorities, and coordinate information and resource flows can help maximize development effectiveness and impact.