The government and donor agencies alike consider urban water supply in Burkina Faso one of the rare development success stories in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The World Bank and USAID today consider the public company one of the best performing water utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the late 1990s, the World Bank had insisted that the private sector should play a significant role in providing water services in Burkina Faso.

Instead, it pragmatically integrated certain principles of market-oriented sector reforms into its own policies in order to further increase the performance of the public utility.

In rural areas, a 2004 decentralization law has given responsibility for water supply to the country's 301 municipalities (communes) which have no track record in providing or contracting out these services.

[7] ONEA has substantially invested in sanitation by helping households to build such shower and washing facilities connected to soakaway pits, as well as improved latrines.

ONEA subsidizes these facilities with the support of international donors and with the cash generated by the sanitation surcharge on water bills.

It is supplied mostly by surface water from five reservoirs: The catchment area of the "hill dams" is today completely built up with settlements that have inadequate sanitation systems.

Only about 5% use septic tanks and an even smaller proportion is connected to a 43 km-sewer network completed in 2006 in the city center and that serves mainly commercial, industrial and institutional clients.

The network discharges to a 20-ha stabilization pond in the Kossodo industrial area, which also treats sludge from septic tanks brought in by tankers.

[16] During its first years of existence, which were marked by a period of political instability, the utility achieved little in terms of expanding access and improving service quality.

In the early 1990s the government initiated a process of restructuring and strengthening the national water utility ONEA, while investing heavily in expanding access with the assistance of foreign aid.

Improving cost recovery was an important element of this process: Tariffs were increased by 30% to almost €1 per cubic meter, so that ONEA enjoyed a healthy financial situation and reported an accounting profit.

The mutual responsibilities of the public company and the government were laid out in the form of a Contrat Plan setting quantitative targets over a number of years, as it is common for state-owned enterprises in many Francophone countries.

[16] Despite these successes of the public company, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank insisted about establishing a public-private partnership for water supply in Burkina Faso during the late 1990s.

The Government also helped to strengthen the utility by not interfering with investment and staffing decisions and paying its water bills on time.

[3] Another element of the urban sector reform was the decision to improve commercial practices of ONEA through a short-term performance-based service contract with a private company.

The international bid for this five-year service contract was won by the French private operator Veolia in January 2001, two months before the World Bank's announcement of a new US$70 million credit for water supply in Ouagadougou.

[20] According to the World Bank, before decentralization the development of rural services suffered from an overly centralized planning and investment process, which bypassed local governments.

Rural water supply was, and to some extent still is, characterized by a diversity of project rules, implementation approaches, and technical options that are left to the discretion of financing agencies and NGOs.

[3] Government policies for water supply and sanitation are codified in two main laws and in a number of national plans and strategies for specific sub-sectors.

[21] In 2006 the government adopted a National Water Supply and Sanitation Program (PN-AEPA) to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

[3] To support the strategy, the President of Burkina Faso launched a national campaign to increase access to adequate sanitation in June 2010.

As mentioned above, the municipalities are not expected to deliver services themselves, but rather to delegate the delivery to public entities such as ONEA or local private companies.

The donors increasingly finance projects together in the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, thus reducing the fragmentation of external cooperation.

German development cooperation supports water and sanitation projects and programs implemented by ONEA as well as the decentralized directorates of the ministries and regional authorities.

It supported the improvement and expansion of the water supply of Bobo-Dioulasso as well as the collection and treatment of industrial and household sewage in the same city.

Germany also supports the provision of water supply and sanitation for households, schools and hospitals in small and medium towns in the country's southwest.

According to its website, it helped over 32,000 people gain access to clean water and started a credit scheme for sanitation and soap-making enterprises with women.

Initiative: Eau is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization dedicated to increasing the safety and quality of drinking water services in developing areas and crisis zones.