Water Demand Management and Household Level Metering in Low-Income Areas of Urban Africa

Abstract

Increasing the level of water metering is an objective of most initiatives for the operational restructuring of African water utilities promoted by donors and development agencies from the 1990s. Water metering penetration is a common benchmarking indicator to measure the performances of water utilities. In contrast with other benchmarks and targets set for the African water sector, which remain largely unmet, water metering at household and at water point levels are quite successful. The study discusses the arguments behind the widespread acceptance of the target of 100% metering, focusing on the suitability of household level metering for low-income settlements of urban Africa. An empirical analysis shows that metering is not an effective water demand management tool for domestic consumption, probably due to the fact that average consumption is already low, and it can hardly be reduced further. The case study shows that universal metering ambitions might discourage household level connections.