Understanding urban water utility performance, water network topology and geographic water access: case studies in Sub-Sahara Africa

Abstract

Since the United Nations launched initiatives to improve global water governance and resilience, progress has been made towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which aims to ensure universal access to safe water. However, significant challenges remain, particularly concerning inequalities in urban water supply, a problem that is especially pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). These disparities are closely linked to the region’s urbanisation processes, often characterised by the proliferation of slums, which SDG 11 (sustainable and safe cities) aims to upgrade. While numerous studies have examined the heterogeneity of urban water services in SSA, there has been a lack of quantitative analysis on how urban environments influence water service performance. Focusing on water pipeline networks and kiosk-based services in two SSA cities, 1) Kisumu, Kenya, and 2) Kigali, Rwanda, the research integrates graph-based modelling, co-location analysis, network-based community detection algorithms, and the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) model to assess the impact of urban morphology, slum distribution, and policy interventions on both piped and non-piped water services. The findings from the graph-based analysis indicate that the configuration of essential services, particularly piped water provision, is shaped by two primary factors: 1) The principles guiding network construction, and 2) The influence of urban morphology. Pipeline networks exhibit discernible correlations with road networks, with betweenness and closeness centralities displaying similar distributions across both cities. Community detection further reveals that pipelines serving slum areas form distinct clusters from those supplying other neighbourhoods. In Kisumu, areas under delegated water service management arrangements also form distinct networks. Accessibility analysis of water kiosks highlights disparities in water point availability within slums, shaped in part by broader urban layout constraints. Additionally, the study finds that the methodology used to generate population datasets significantly influences water access indices. Settlement-constrained datasets offer a more robust representation of water access in SSA cities. Given the limited prior applications of graph-based and 2SFCA methods in water service research, this study provides a quantitative workflow for assessing urban water service disparities in data-scarce SSA cities and addresses critical knowledge gaps in both water governance and urban studies. The findings of this study underscore the need for an integrated approach, in which water provision challenges should be addressed alongside broader urban planning initiatives such as slum upgrading programmes.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jim Wright: orcid.org/0000-0002-8842-2181

ORCID for Christopher Lloyd: orcid.org/0000-0001-7435-8230

ORCID for David Martin: orcid.org/0000-0003-0397-0769

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