Assessment of the sustainability of community-managed water supply services in Ghana

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Assessment of the sustainability of community‑managed water supply services in Ghana Emmanuel Kwame Nti1   · Camillus Abawiera Wongnaa1 · Nana Sampson E. Edusah2 · John‑Eudes Andivi Bakang1 Received: 16 October 2018 / Accepted: 18 October 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract The study assessed the sustainability of community-managed water supply services drawing empirical evidence from a small town water supply system in Ghana. The study followed a fully quantitative research approach. Data were collected from 387 respondents who were almost all public standpipe users (98.45%) using a structured survey questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were reported, and MACBETH was the method of analysis. The study revealed that quality drinking water and reliability are the most important criteria in the opinion of survey respondents for small town water supply system. Building on this empirical understanding, the differences in importance that respondents attributed to each of these criteria were measured, and, for example, implementation of policies and public disclosure was their lowest priority. The results revealed that survey respondents believe that all criteria are currently within a range that indicates a sustainable water supply system. The paper recommend among other things that management of communitymanaged water supply system should be well positioned to ensure continuous water quality testing while designing drinking water quality improvement plans. Keywords  Multi-criteria decision analysis · Community-managed · Sustainability · Water supply system

1 Introduction Access to water has been made a universal goal due to the role of water in supporting the achievement of sustainable development in all forms (Connor 2015), but the number of people without reliable access to quality drinking water according to WHO (2015) stands at 1.8 billion and out of that an estimated 663 million people are already not having access to improved sources of drinking water. However, in order not to continue the business as * Emmanuel Kwame Nti [email protected] 1

Department of Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness and Extension, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Private Mail Bag, University Post Office, Kumasi, Ghana

2

Bureau of Integrated Rural Development, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Private Mail Bag, University Post Office, Kumasi, Ghana



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usual and to mitigate this water crisis, the UN Sustainable Development Goals built on the Millennium Development Goals sought to complete the essential full water cycle (WWAP 2016). With that, the UN Sustainable Development Goals put importance on drinking water quality, hygiene and sanitation, wastewater, efficient use of water as well as ecosystem protection; building of capacity and participation of stakeholders (WWAP 2017). In Ghana, the community-driven approach which basically gives control of decisions and resources to community groups was adopted when it came to water supply services by th