Since 2019, GRET has been working in the Saint-Louis region in Senegal to strengthen user participation in drinking water services. Taking an innovative commons-based approach, the teams are contributing to the emergence of concerted decision-making mechanisms to ensure smooth operation of water services in the region.

A series of reforms on water management

In the past thirty years, Senegal has experienced a series of management reforms. Since the end of the 1990s, drinking water services were under the responsibility of Rural well users’ associations, or of drinking water networks (ASUFOR or ASUREP). However, in 2014, with a view to more effective management, the State opted to delegate the public drinking water service to international private stakeholders. The territory is divided into delegation zones. Through the National Office of Rural Wells (OFOR), the State centralised management of rural hydraulics in Senegal. This public services delegation generated a loss of users’ influence over decisions concerning water management. This led to defiance among the population vis-à-vis the operator. Strong protests resulted in the State suspending the reform and gave rise to an external evaluation.

A commons-based approach to give users a role in the reform

The Gorom-Lampsar territory was chosen as a pilot zone for public service delegation. It is made up of 13 water purification and treatment units connected to networks in several villages, supplying more than 70,000 inhabitants in the Saint-Louis region.

Since the reform, water users in Gorom-Lampsar have noted a deterioration of the service: decrease in water quality, frequent interruptions to the service, a lack of transparency around billing and investments made by the operator. Lack of dialogue between users, the Office of wells and the private operator is the main source of overall dissatisfaction in communities.

The goals of commoning around drinking water in the Gorom-Lampsar region

• Restore dialogue, trust and mechanisms for accountability between users and decision-makers;
• Structure and strengthen systems for the protection of water users’ rights;
• Create favourable conditions for shared governance of drinking water services in rural areas to mitigate social conflicts.

Main results as of 1 September 2023:

• Stakeholders involved are aware of the need for shared governance;
• Organisation of a first meeting between operators, users’ representatives, local authorities and the delegating authority;
• The beginning of mutual acceptance between the operator and the Users’ Federation, which enabled the latter to implement the Information-Education-Communication (IEC) approach to extend drinking water networks in the Ross Béthio and Lampsar localities;
• A change of message enabling better relationships between users’ and operators;
• Better understanding of each stakeholder’s role: the Users’ Federation gained greater responsibility to deal with malfunctions identified in the service. Questions are being raised about OFOR’s responsibility for the state of the national heritage.

Challenges ahead:

• Implement and facilitate local committees to monitor public service delegation at municipal level (Ndiaye and Mbane) to foster user participation and monitoring in governance of water services.
• Create the conditions necessary for coordination between the monitoring committees at municipal level, and the local monitoring committee set up in the region of Saint-Louis, drawing on the regional framework for consultation on water and sanitation.
• Roll out tools such as role play to improve understanding of governance issues in the water and sanitation sector.
• Create favourable conditions to extend this commons-based approach to other contexts.

Thanks to this innovative approach, management of drinking water in Senegal seems to be transitioning towards greater participation by users and shared governance, offering promising prospects for the future.