Title: Changing water governance in Ghana through decentralisation

Authors: George Laryea-Adjei; Meine Pieter Van Dijk

Addresses: UNICEF South Africa, P.O. Box 4884, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa. ' UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, P.O. Box 3015, 26001 DA Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: There is a great deal of diversity in the form water governance takes in the provision of water services at the district level in Ghana. Two central government agencies, the GWCL and CWSA have oversight responsibility. The decentralisation framework has had some influence on the approach used by CWSA, which was established in the heat of the reforms; and no influence on the GWCL, which was established long before the current wave of decentralisation reforms started. While the CWSA approach seeks a central role for local government in service delivery and thereby provides mainly policy and funding roles to local governments, the GWCL operates in a deconcentrated manner having almost no institutional links with local government. By operating under GWCL, Tamale for example, does not enjoy the benefits that decentralisation and pluralism bring, unlike Savelugu-Nanton, which has significantly increased coverage and reliability of services in recent years.

Keywords: decentralisation; water governance; drinking water; sanitation; Ghana; water management; local government; service delivery; pluralism; service coverage; service reliability; water services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJW.2012.049497

International Journal of Water, 2012 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.215 - 231

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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