PROVISION OF WATER TO THE POOR IN AFRICA An important area for future research relates to how formal water tariffs and quality (hours of service) affect the household resale market. If policy makers increase prices in the formal sector in an effort to make pricing more equitable, this may harm the lower income purchaser of household resale water more than the seller. At the same time, if the utility improved hours of supply and pressure of water, and if the resale market is competitive, this could serve to lower prices, particularly where there are flat or estimated payments on household connections. The one case providing time series data on this is in Maputo, Mozambique. In Maputo, the unit price of water from a household connection had increased by 340 percent between 2001 and 2006, but the price increase from household resale increased by only 223 percent. While the formal price of water had increased over this period, many of those with yard taps who were reselling water continued to be metered on estimated (likely lower than actual) consumption.

**Table 3.4   Prices charged by formal and informal standpipes / kiosks and by household water resellers**

|||Stand<br>|pipe /kiosks<br>Informal<br>||||Hou<br>|seholdresell<br>Informal<br>|ers<br>||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Formal|Min|Max|Average|Rate|Cost*|Min|Max|Average|Rate|
|City|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(inf/for)|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(US$/m3)|(inf/cost)|
|Addis Ababa|0.19|0.58|1.15|0.87|4.6|0.36|1.2|1.7|1.44|4.0|
|Cotonou|0.41|N/V|N/V|1.91|4.7|0.79|N/V|N/V|1.91|2.4|
|Accra|3.64|N/V|N/V|5.51|1.5|0.63|N/V|N/V|1.53|2.4|
|Abidjan|0.45|0.60|1.25|0.93|2.1|0.53|1.5|2.1|1.82|3.5|
|Maputo|0.31|0.31|1.51|0.98|3.2|0.62|0.6|1.1|0.98|1.6|
|Blantyre|0.29|0.63|1.48|1.16|4.0|0.51|0.8|8.4|3.38|6.6|
|Kampala|0.39|0.25|2.00|1.40|3.6|0.67|N/V|N/V|1.40|2.1|
|Kigali|0.44|N/V|N/V|1.79|4.1|0.63|N/V|N/V|1.79|2.9|
|Dar es<br>Salaam|0.58|0.55|1.20|0.87|1.5|0.50|0.8|1.2|0.98|2.0|
|Average|0.74|0.49|1.43|1.71|3.24|0.58|0.99|2.92|1.69|3.05|
|Median|0.41|0.56|1.36|1.16|3.63|0.62|0.84|1.73|1.53|2.45|
|Min|0.19|0.25||0.87|1.51|0.36|0.65||0.98|1.60|
|Max|3.64||2.00|5.51|4.66|0.79||8.44|3.38|6.63|
|Source: AICD W|SS database|2007, other.|||||||||
|* Householdres|ellercostis cal|culated using|domestic tari|ff 40m3/month|||||||

Reselling of water by households with private connections is commonly believed to be illegal in SubSaharan cities (Collignon andVézina 2000; Kariuki 2003; Boyer 2007), but only 4 out of 15 cities in the study with prevalence of household water resellers<sup>**23**</sup> explicitly prohibit the resale of water by households (table 3.5). Only 3 cities have legalized household resale and require a permit for this business. In the majority of cases, a confusing legal limbo prevails; household water resellers are neither prohibited nor legalized. Even if regulations are in place prohibiting household water resellers, they are not enforced, as in Dakar or Dar es Salaam. Utilities and government simply do not control and rarely contest this practice, and in the case of Kampala the practice is encouraged in areas at the end of the network. Detailed case studies that highlight the importance of this source in allowing access where standposts or

> 23 See Table 8

29