Despite considerable progress made in past decades, drinking water services in Burkinabè urban areas remain heterogeneous in terms of their service coverage and reliability, infrastructure performance, and water quality. This situation is due in part to the insufficient coordination of the various actors, national and international, intervening in the drinking water sector. Their insufficient coordination, particularly the non-coordination of their monitoring programs, leads to inadequate and incomplete drinking water service data. These data is crucial to drinking water development activities and service provision. Without it, actor decision-making is uninformed, which leads to resource misallocation and, subsequently, to reduced safe water access and increased waterborne disease incidence. The current study works to address this data gap in the city of Fada N’Gourma, Burkina Faso. Armed with these data, water actors are be able to identify the areas most in need of further infrastructure investment and the geographic areas and specific seasonal times with the poorest water quality, allowing for targeted efforts.

Collaboration with David Immer (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Several water problems in sub-Saharan Africa can be traced back to governance structures instead of the resource base itself. In this vein, it has been highlighted that 20% of existing water points in Burkina Faso are currently non-functional. In order to address the problem, this research project aims to understand the problematics and opportunities in the organization of water service provision in Fada N’Gourma. In doing so, a novel framework is applied to analyze water governance in an urban context. The framework focuses on understanding the perceptions of all stakeholders involved, from the consumers of water services to the responsible authorities. A holistic picture of the current situation shall be painted highlighting the opinions and insights of the different actors.