Where Community Management Works: The Evolution and Professional Management of Piped Water Supplies in Rural Kenya

By adopting process tracing in case study research, this research examines how seven rural piped water schemes in Embu and Tharaka Nithi counties in Kenya were constructed and successfully (or not) adopted professional management of their water supplies leading to sustainable services. The schemes have existed in some capacity for the past 30+ years. This research is in consideration that rural water supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa are often characterized by management challenges and evidence from the region indicates that about a third of rural water systems are non-functional at any given time. An intricate interaction between resolution of collective action problems, social capital, and specialization is seen to influence the ability of schemes to evolve into professionally managed organizations. This argument is premised on how the schemes were able to i) draw from the ideals of self-help under Kenya’s Harambee movement to ensure construction of their water schemes, ii) appropriate experiences from coffee cooperative societies to management of their water schemes, and iii) hire trained personnel to perform varied operations and management functions within their schemes. Further, the research shows that there is clear added value for having institutional and organizational arrangements that support the emergence and operation of professionally managed community water schemes. The research argues that by appropriating an institutional template from the coffee cooperative societies, successful schemes were able to develop a more nuanced chain of actor relationships within their operations than is often associated with community management of rural water supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, successful schemes demonstrate a clear separation of oversight by an elected water management committee and day-to-day operations by an employed staff. This separation is accompanied by defined incentives and accountability frameworks between the water users, the water management committees, and the scheme staff. The experiences of the schemes, however, also demonstrate that external oversight mechanisms are needed to enforce these incentive and accountability frameworks