**1.1 Theoretical framework**

*Resources of Water*

construction and scheme management.

in scope than formal utility-community partnerships and often operate in small towns [4]. The rise of community water initiatives in different parts of the world gained momentum after the UNDP led Community Water Initiative (CWI) to support decentralized, demand-driven, innovative, low-cost, and community based water resource management and water supply and sanitation projects in rural areas through participatory development approach for water supply scheme planning,

From 1990s, the community water management has gained more credence as an alternative source of water supply especially in the rural areas and informal settlement areas in the urban centres. Community management of rural piped water supplies is now widely established in many countries and will become even more common in future [5]. This increasing emphasis on institutional dimensions of service delivery is also reflected in the Delhi Statement1 of 1990, which was to provide guiding principles for water supply and sanitation in the 1990s. While maintaining a focus on the use of low-cost appropriate technologies, the Statement include principles for institutional reforms, institutions of community management of services and sound financial practices [6]. In Latin America, the disadvantaged segments of the community get supply from leased regular water pipelines operated by richer businessmen on behalf of the government. In Cochabamba-Bolivia, 74% of the poorest residents lack access to municipal water service and therefore rely on communities built commonly managed wells and water systems. Although Sub-Saharan Africa is making the slowest relative and aggregate global progress with one in three people (30%) without improved drinking water access [7], most clean water is delivered via community-managed water points, either hand pumps or piped gravity-fed systems.

In Bolivia the dissatisfaction of the community against privatization of water

and maintaining water services that local communities have a leading role. In Africa, community water supply operates mainly as an informal sector. Whereas in some countries, the supply has been a deliberate move by the government to distribute water to the disadvantaged through water communal points like in Uganda, Ethiopia and Malawi and Tanzania [11], in others especially, Kenya; community water supply has been orchestrated through self-help initiatives by local communities with no direct involvement by the government. It is prevalent in both rural and urban sectors. Once established, the community water projects seek support from donors which may include the government and its agencies; nongovernmental organizations, Church and even individuals to help them increase water access, first to the members of the organization and secondly to customers. To that extent, community water has increasingly become an alternative means to water supply to increasingly larger and economically disadvantaged segments of the society. Despite the evidence that the community water supply has contributed positively more than any other single approach to provision of water supply in

Africa, it is still regarded as an informal approach.

services caused serious riots that resulted into the cancelation of Multinational Water supply contract. There are scholars who have little faith in service delivery under the community management mode. In separate studies, argued that community management is less impressive than theory suggests and has serious problems have regarded the concept of community management approach as 'myth' in common pool resource management in Africa [7–10]. This is further lent credence by the fact that whether at central, regional or local, governments play dominant role in all-Africa infrastructure assessment except in water. It is only in the area of providing

The paper argues that community water management approach has not been pursued through its optimal level. Either the state has not used the right approach or has neglected the community. The argument is that the state ought to have used deliberate and formal approach to facilitate the management of community water

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The paper is based on the theory of New Public Management in the delivery of public services as propagated by Hood 1990, Kaboolian, 1998, and Page, 2005. The assumption is that governments need to disaggregate public services to their most basic units and focus on their cost management. In this context, the government shall increase access to water by recognizing and establishing community water organizations by focusing upon entrepreneurial leadership under community management, each of which will initiate their own innovations to ensure result based outputs. The community water organizations that will then be subjected to input-output control and evaluation upon performance management and audit. By doing this, more efficiency, public private partnerships and innovation shall be realized resulting into increased access to affordable water to the undeserving segment, currently unprioritized. This is informed by the argument that as currently constituted, community water management has largely been ignored. They either operate informally and independently as in Kenya, direct control under local governments like in South Africa, managed public private partnership as in Ghana or with under loosely managed and unmonitored outfits in countries where the government had initiated the projects like in Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania, hence gross underperformance.
