Arrangements and cost of providing support to rural water service providers : paper presented at the 6th rural water supply network forum 2011 Ugand...

This paper is about the costs of providing direct and indirect support to rural water service providers. It provides an overview of what such support entails, how this can be organised, what it costs, and how it can be financed. The paper is based on a desk review of existing literature in seven countries and an analysis of primary cost data collected by the WASHCost project in Andhra Pradesh (India), Mozambique and Ghana in 2010 and 2011. Support to service providers in the form of monitoring, technical assistance and (re) training of service providers is called direct support. Indirect support refers to aspects such as macro-level planning and policy-making. Successful cases of organising direct support are found in (lower) middle income countries in Latin America and Southern Africa. Though data needs to be interpreted with caution, an expenditure of more than US$ 3 /person/year seems to be effective in those countries. Other countries, particularly in Africa were found to have levels of expenditure of less than US$ 1 /person/year, and this was considered too low to be effective. [authors abstract]

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