Water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso

Water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso are characterized by high access to water supply in urban areas, while access to an at least basic water resources in rural areas, where three quarters of the population live, remains relatively low. An estimated one third of water facilities in rural areas are out of service because of a lack of maintenance. Access to basic sanitation lags significantly behind access to water supply. The government and donor agencies alike consider urban water supply in Burkina Faso one of the rare development success stories in Sub-Saharan Africa. Access to an improved water source in urban areas increased from 73% in 1990 to 95% in 2008. Water supply that used to be intermittent now is continuous. The national utility Office National de l'Eau et de l'Assainissement (ONEA) was insolvent twenty years ago and provided poor service to a small number of customers. As of 2010, it has grown substantially and is financially healthy. The World Bank and USAID today consider the public company one of the best performing water utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Increasing cost recovery and improving the efficiency of service provision have been important elements in the turnaround of the utility. In the late 1990s, the World Bank had insisted that the private sector should play a significant role in providing water services in Burkina Faso. The government rejected this approach. Instead, it pragmatically integrated certain principles of market-oriented sector reforms into its own policies in order to further increase the performance of the public utility. In rural areas, a 2004 decentralization law has given responsibility for water supply to the country's 301 municipalities (communes) which have no track record in providing or contracting out these services. Implementation of the decentralization has been slow. Municipalities, whose capacities are being strengthened, are contracting out service provision to local private companies, or in some cases to ONEA. The government has adopted a National Sanitation Strategy in 2008 and President Blaise Compaoré launched a campaign in 2010 to boost the implementation of the strategy.

Access

Methodologies and data sources. The Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) of WHO and UNICEF, which is the internationally accepted source for the measurement to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water supply and sanitation, relies on the compilation of various surveys (Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Cluster Indicators Surveys (MCIS)) to establish access rates. These surveys typically assess the availability of infrastructure, not service quality. The 2017 estimates for Burkina Faso thus indicate access rates to an at least basic water source of 79 percent in urban areas and 43 percent in rural areas. The Government relies on an entirely different approach, based on the concept of "reasonable access". This concept differs from the JMP approach by taking into account aspects of service quality, such as waiting time and water quality. According to the government approach, the water access rates in 2005 were lower than under the JMP approach, standing at 74 percent in urban areas and 60 percent in rural areas. While the “reasonable access” approach is more sophisticated, it also faces greater challenges in terms of availability of data. Water supply. In 2015, 54% of the population had access to "at least basic" water, 79% and 43%, in urban and rural areas respectively. Still, in 2015, around 8 million lacked access to "at least basic" water. According to JMP estimates access to an at least basic water source in urban areas only increased from 75% in 2000 to 79% in 2015. In rural areas access increased from 41% in 2000 to 43% in 2015. The increase of access to water supply in urban areas was facilitated by the introduction of a social connection program that reduced connection fees in 2005 (see below under tariffs). However, some of the newly installed connections are not used, either because the connected compound was still waiting for actual occupancy or because households were unable to pay the monthly water bills because their income was either too low or too irregular. The share of “inactive connections” was 20% in Bobo Diolassou and 7% in Ouagadougou. Sanitation. In 2015, 23% of the population had access to "at least" sanitation, 48% and 12%, in urban and rural areas respectively. Still, in 2015, around 13 million lacked access to "at least basic" sanitation. Sanitation in Burkina Faso is mostly in the form of on-site sanitation, including latrines for defecation and soakaway pits for greywater from showers and washing facilities. Compared to the significant increase in access to water supply, access to adequate sanitation increased only slightly between 2000 and 2015 from 75% to 79% in urban areas and from 2% to 12% in rural areas. Open defecation remains widespread, estimated at 48% of the population. Those who have neither access to adequate sanitation nor defecate in the open use shared or unimproved latrines. These are not considered adequate sanitation facilities by the WHO. Burkina Faso fully subsidizes the capital costs for latrines in rural areas. Despite this effort, between 2000 and 2008 the number of people defecating in the open in rural areas increased. ONEA has substantially invested in sanitation by helping households to build such shower and washing facilities connected to soakaway pits, as well as improved latrines. ONEA subsidizes these facilities with the support of international donors and with the cash generated by the sanitation surcharge on water bills. The grants provided by ONEA amount on average to 40 percent of the cost of facilities, thus making them affordable to households. Sewerage plays a marginal role in Burkina Faso. There are only 235 connections to sewers in the entire country, all in Ouagadougou.

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