Revenue patterns of piped water services in rural Africa

Rural Africa lags behind all other global regions in progress towards establishing universal and equitable access to safely managed drinking water. This challenge is marked by a notional interest in piped water for achieving service level goals while increasing demand and financial viability. Yet, a paucity of reliable information and evidence perpetuates unrealistic assumptions of how infrastructure and payment collection alternatives influence seasonal revenue generation. The emergence of professional service delivery models offers new sources of operational and financial data with potential to address knowledge gaps and inform viable, resilient, and equitable drinking water investments. The primary aim of this project is to understand how seasonal patterns of domestic water use and payments affect revenue from piped water services in rural Africa. Empirical analyses have drawn on longitudinal records from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda that cumulatively span more than 500 service-years. In contrast to conventional assumptions, findings suggest household-level services exhibit similar seasonal revenue variability as off-site services and are not consistently associated with higher revenue when tariff level is controlled. Piped service areas with consistent seasonal rainfall have a third less revenue during wet months. Furthermore, prepaid credit payments do not consistently improve revenue generation compared to conventional payment approaches. Three recommendations for rural water policy and practice are highlighted from this research. First, the threat of seasonal revenue variability to rural piped water services can be characterised by assessing rainfall patterns on localised, intra-seasonal scales. Second, complementary revenue patterns of on- and off-premises services can be leveraged at incremental stages of infrastructure investment. Third, caution should be exercised when considering prepaid credit over conventional payment approaches to prevent unrealistic revenue expectations and perverse outcomes.