PROVISION OF WATER TO THE POOR IN AFRICA Public standposts are by and large connected to a city-wide utility water system. Standposts that rely on groundwater for their supply are found only in cities with accessible groundwater resources and in less densely populated peri-urban areas with low exposure to pollution hazards. In these places, private boreholes have flourished, as noted below. These are most often found in specific areas within a city where the utility does not have a water network.

# Household resellers

Perhaps the most significant sign of the inability of utilities to keep pace with urban growth is found in the development of household resellers in countries with medium to low water coverage levels.

|DRC (HCI)|Kinshasa|21|N/V|
|---|---|---|---|
|Mozambique (MCI)|Maputo|58|0|
|Rwanda (MCI)|Kigali|75|0|
|Namibia (MCI)|Windhoek|100|100|
|Lesotho (LCI)|Maseru (a)|48|100|
|Kenya (LCI)|Nairobi|89|0|
|Nigeria (LCI)|Kaduna|55|96|
|Benin (LCI)|Cotonou|100|0|
|Burkina Faso (LCI)|Ouagadougou|100|0|
|Cape Verde (LCI)|Praia|100|0|
|Niger (LCI)|Niamey|98|0|
|Zambia (LCI)|Lusaka|97|0|
|Malawi (LCI)|Blantyre|90|0|
|Madagascar (LCI)|Antananarivo|82|40|
||Average|81|24|

Source: AICD WSS Survey, 2007.

Note: Data obtained from independent studies have been highlighted. The remaining data come from utility and government sources.

a. A negligible percentage of the standpipe/kiosk coverage is paid. LCI = low conflict index; MCI = medium conflict index.

This phenomenon is somewhat hidden, but it emerges clearly when comparing detailed case studies. About 70 percent of utilities surveyed have reported that the resale of water from households is commonplace, and consumer assessment surveys in cities in Mozambique, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and other countries have shown that reliance on household water resellers can account for as much as 50 percent of water resources for a city’s population, and up to 80 percent of water resources for the urban poor.

Households usually “hide” in the surveys the fact that they buy water from their neighbors because household water resellers often are not listed in the established categories of household surveys. Therefore, the household water resellers are concealed in the “piped water” or “other” coverage categories. Independent sectoral surveys on the coverage of household water resellers for four cities included in the AICD study ranges from 10 to 35 percent for the connected and from 15 to 50 percent for the unconnected. Evidence from case studies suggests that household water resellers can be as important as standpipes for the supply of the unconnected in Sub-Saharan cities.

This market can represent a significant loss for the utility. Detailed analysis in a consumer assessment in five cities in Mozambique in 1996 showed that the estimated annual sales of water in Maputo totaled $3.2 million, of which $1.2 million could be attributed to formal house connections and yard tap sales and $1.5 million to yard tap owners who resell water to their neighbors (SAWA 1997; Keener and Banerjee 2007). Thus, the sales volume in the informal resale market exceeded the size of the domestic consumer market, representing a benefit for yard tap owners and lost revenues for the water utility. Ironically, the other delivery vehicle for low-volume water sales, standposts, was also in a state of decline. In the muchsmaller secondary city of Quelimane, the size of the resale water market was constrained by very low and irregular supplies of network water. The approximate value of water sold per annum was $711,000, of which only 32 percent ($230,000) went to the water utility. As in Maputo, the largest source of sales from 9