4. In Search of the Right Formula: Community-Based Water Management

For the past few decades, much effort has been made to determine the right formula for managing water supplies in Africa (Golooba-Mutebi 2012). Should water be delivered by government agencies, private companies or communities themselves? 

Ideas around community participation have gained traction, partly in response to the failure of centralised governments in delivering basic services. Today, the community approach, typically lauded for enabling local empowerment, is propagated by a wide network of government bodies and NGOs, to the point where it has become 'the development orthodoxy', especially in rural Africa (Page 2003:486). 

Figure 1: Picture used by Oxfam to advocate for community-based water resource management (Oxfam n.d.)

Community-based water management brings local communities into the development, ownership, operations and maintenance of water supplies, often through the formation of a water committee (Harvey and Reed 2006). The merits of this approach are the sense of ownership it generates, its usage of simple technology that is inexpensive to maintain, and how it transfers responsibility from African Governments to local communities which are supposedly more efficient water managers (Page 2003). 

Kumbo, Northwest Cameroon

The story of Kumbo is often used by politicians and NGOs as a successful case of apolitical community-based water management. Kumbo's first water supply was built in the 1960s by community labour, with materials donated by Canada after a Kumbo-born professor negotiated for them (Page 2003). In 1984, this community ownership was transferred to Cameroon's national water corporation, the Societe National Des Eaux du Cameroun (SNEC), which had been managing water in provinces previously colonised by the French. The Northwest Province that Kumbo belonged to, on the other hand, had been a British colony, and problems began to arise - the English-speaking locals clashed with the francophone SNEC employees, the infrastructure deteriorated and utility bills escalated (Lum 2018). 

Figures 2 and 3: Maps depicting Cameroon's provinces and Kumbo's location within the Northwest Province (Page 2003)

Ultimately, the discontent of the locals climaxed in a violent campaign against the SNEC in 1991, which resulted in SNEC's eventual eviction, albeit at the cost of burnt buildings and 6 casualties (Page 2003). After regaining control of the water supply, the locals created the Kumbo Water Authority (KWA), which successfully re-opened the public taps and extended coverage (GWP 2013). Although the KWA has faced significant challenges in the past decade, its success in the 1990s has allowed the story of Kumbo to be sold as a triumph for community-based water management. 

Nevertheless, events do not occur in a vacuum - much like how COP27 was affected by its geopolitical backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the protests against SNEC must be examined in relation to its socio-political context. Closer inspection reveals that there was more to the story than a mere desire to manage water supplies: overthrowing the Francophone SNEC was in fact part of broader political unrest brought on by Cameroon's rapidly declining economy, and community water management was a device through which locals promulgated their 'more far-reaching ambitions of democratisation and even independence for English-speaking Cameroon' (Page 2003:495). 

This case study illustrates that over-emphasising the empowerment narrative offered by community-based water management can distract from other crucial elements such as political climates, which then begs the question: do locals truly desire to manage their own water? 

Research suggests that this might not be the case (Hope 2015). Next week, we shall continue our search for the right formula by examining the other dominant set of ideas surrounding water management in Africa: privatisation.