Municipal finance for sanitation in three African cities
Abstract
Cities throughout the developing world face daunting challenges in providing adequate sanitation services, particularly for low-income communities. Any 21st century solution to this problem must include market-driven approaches: people (including poor people) paying directly for goods or services received. At the same time, it is clear that the market alone is not sufficient to provide sanitation services to all: the money that low-income people are able and willing to pay directly for sanitation services (tariffs) must be supplemented by international transfers (donor funds) and – critically important for sustainability – by taxes (public funds). This discussion paper reports data on municipal public finance for sanitation in three African cities, based on in-country examination of available budget records: Ga West Municipality, part of the Greater Accra conglomeration in Ghana; Maputo, capital of Mozambique; and Nakuru County in Kenya, including the city of Nakuru. Alongside previous data on Temeke (Dar es Salaam), this begins to provide a more complete understanding of municipal public finance for sanitation in African cities. We look at each city one by one, in each case considering (a) the nature of the sanitation sector, (b) the current state of municipal finance for sanitation, (c) the current state of advocacy around sanitation, and (d) opportunities for advocacy to increase municipal public finance for sanitation.
Citation
Edwards, B.; Nagpal, T.; Rose, R.; Abdul Nash Mohammed; Uandela, A.; Wolfsbauer, M.; Norman, G. Municipal finance for sanitation in three African cities. WSUP, (2015) 32 pp.
Links