page_title: Water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso
section_title: Service provision
hierarchical_section_title: Water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso / Responsibilities for water supply and sanitation / Service provision
caption_attribution_description: English: A village pump in Burkina Faso. The tree nursery is situated next to the water pump in the village to make watering. Français&#160;: Un puits à eau au Burkina Faso. Le pépinière est situé à côté du puits à eau.
context_page_description: Water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso are characterized by high access to water supply in urban areas, while access to an at least basic water sources in rural areas – where three quarters of the population live – remains relatively low. An estimated one third of water facilities in rural areas are out of service because of a lack of maintenance. Access to at least basic sanitation lags significantly behind access to water supply.
  The government and donor agencies alike consider urban water supply in Burkina Faso one of the rare development success stories in Sub-Saharan Africa. Access to an improved water source in urban areas increased from 73% in 1990 to 95% in 2008. Water supply that used to be intermittent now is continuous. The national utility Office National de l'Eau et de l'Assainissement was insolvent twenty years ago and provided poor service to a small number of customers. As of 2010, it has grown substantially and is financially healthy. The World Bank and USAID today consider the public company one of the best performing water utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
context_section_description: Urban areas. Burkina Faso's urban water and sanitation service provider is the national utility Office National de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement (ONEA). According to the World Bank and USAID, ONEA has an excellent record of performance in West Africa. It serves 43 cities and towns throughout the country. ONEA's and the government's mutual responsibilities are laid out in three-year performance contracts (contracts plans) with explicit operational targets. A board of directors is responsible for the supervision of ONEA's performance and for all strategic decisions. It has the authority to appoint (and fire) the general manager and determine employees’ pay scales, while a general manager makes day-to-day operational decisions. The utility is allowed to cut off service for nonpayment of water bills, and its workers are subject to private sector (not civil service) rules.
  The urban centers served by ONEA have an estimated population of 3.3 million people in 2008, about one quarter of the country's population. The two largest cities, Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, account for 64 percent of the total population served by the utility. A sanitation department (Direction de l'assainissement, DASS) is specifically responsible for urban sanitation.
  Rural areas. In rural areas and small towns outside the service area of ONEA, where about three quarters of the population live, community service providers (Associations d'usagers de l'eau) have relied upon support from international donors and local and international non-governmental organizations (NGO). The decentralization process initiated in 2004 led to a transfer of the responsibility for water supply and sanitation to the municipalities (communes) in 2009, but confirmed the mandate of ONEA to deliver urban and sanitation services within its existing service area. As mentioned above, the municipalities are not expected to deliver services themselves, but rather to delegate the delivery to public entities such as ONEA or local private companies. In some regions community service providers have associated themselves at the regional level.  One example is the Fédération des usagers de l'eau de la région de Bobo-Dioulasso (Faureb). The members of the federation set a unique water tariff for the 40 small towns and villages in their region. They also administer funds for maintenance, renewal and new investments through the Federation's management center (Centre de gestion). This mechanisms also allows for cross-subsidies between the different small towns and villages in the Federation.
caption: A village pump in Balga, a village in Eastern Burkina Faso.
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