Groundwater Continued- Community Management

In my last post I discussed the potential of groundwater and a common way that it is utilised is through handpumps, similar to that seen in figure 1. In fact these simple mechanisms are responsible for providing water to 200 million rural people in Africa (Hope 2015). However, such handpumps are also a form of a specific strategy- community management. This is an approach that has become the model for management of rural water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa (Harvey and Reed 2007). 

Figure 1. A typical Afridev handpump (source: www.gwiwestafrica.org) 

Community management is, "a bottom-up development approach whereby community members have a say in their own development and the community assumes control – managerial, operation, and maintenance responsibility – for the water system”(Harvey and Reed 2007: 368) and this is fulfilled through a community water committee. The rise in advocacy for community-based approaches has grown as a result of government inability to maintain infrastructure, with this largely being due to a lack of resources (Carter et al. 1999). Such approaches would seem promising, as they may provide  empowerment and a sense of responsibility that can lead to greater efficiency. However, despite the ubiquity of this approach its effectiveness is also limited. Research of community-managed water points in Malawi for example shows how preventive maintenance is lacking, while community management committees struggle to collect funds, resulting in just just 13% of them being able afford a replacement rod (Chowns 2015). The picture for Africa as a whole is that one in three of the continent's one million  handpumps are not working at any one time (Hope 2015). Nonetheless, the theme of variability has been consistent throughout my posts and this applies here once again, as operation failure rates of such rural water systems vary between 30 and 60% (Harvey and Reed 2007). Given the limited success of such approaches one must question why they are so popular. The most likely explanation is that it is seen as attractive, since it takes pressure off of governments, as a lack of success can be blamed on the community for not applying sufficient effort (Chowns 2017). 

Meanwhile, community management has been argued to be beneficial for communities, due to how it provides them with choice and empowerment.  However, proposing alternatives such as private sector solutions, is not necessarily disempowering, as the community still has the freedom to choose whether they want complete control or not - a survey in Uganda showed 88% had no objections to a private sector entity being responsible for management (Harvey and Reed 2007).

Going back to my first blog I mentioned how generalisations about Africa are made all too often. These generalisations can help give a clearer picture as to why community management is not necessarily a suitable approach in Africa. Western stereotypes of communities in low income countries being perfectly harmonious, with cooperation and ownership suggest that community management should be the perfect approach, but this is not necessarily the case and rural water systems in higher income countries are not effectively managed by communities so there is no reason for that to be the case in Africa (Harvey and Reed 2007). As such, we see how romantic views of Africa can lead to strategies that are not particularly suitable. 

Community management in Africa has not had the impacts that many had hoped for. Instead it has shown just how crucial effective management is to ensure that groundwater's potential in the water and food dynamic is realised and more generally how detrimental stereotypes can be to strategies in Africa.