August 29, 2012? Home to 158 million people, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa. It accounts for 47% of West Africa's population. According to the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects, Nigeria is among the countries that will see the fastest urban population growth in the next 40 years, and Nigeria's cities are expected to add 200 million people.
During the last ten years, Nigeria has been carrying out an ambitious and far-reaching national reform agenda. As part of its Country Partnership Strategy, Nigeria is focusing on three themes to transform and diversify its economy: improving governance, maintaining non-oil growth, and promoting human development.
The core issue of governance underpins many of Nigeria's development challenges, especially at the state level. Nigeria's 36 states and 774 local governments have considerable policy autonomy given the high level of fiscal decentralization in the country. They control 50% of government revenues as well as responsibility for the delivery of public services, including water supplies.
In addition to issues of governance, senior management and executives of water utilities in Nigeria and elsewhere face a myriad of interrelated and complex issues that include: Is the utility sustainable? Is the service coverage inclusive? Are sufficient funds being invested in operations and maintenance? Are consumer needs being met?
Bringing Nigerian Water Utilities Together and Creating a Water Utility Association
To begin tackling many of these issues, all 36 Nigerian water utilities participated in the executive leadership training program, "Designing and Implementing Successful Water Utility Reform." One of the major outcomes of this engagement was the use of the course platform by the Federal Ministry to create a Nigerian Water Utility Association. This includes representatives from all 36 state utilities. The platform will facilitate better communication across all utilities and enable the use of collective bargaining power.
"We have started making arrangement towards full re-establishment of the Nigeria Water Operators Association which resulted from the workshop." Engr Ajisegiri Benson, Head, Water Sector Reform & PPP, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Nigeria.
The course was developed and delivered by the World Bank Institute's (WBI's) Urban practice, in collaboration with the World Bank's Africa Region, the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Water Resources, United States Agency for International Development and WaterAid.
During this week-long in-person engagement, a total of 113 participants, including senior managers and decision makers, interacted with the international and regional faculty through lectures, case studies, exercises, and discussions. The content and course modules were customized by WBI to better respond to the country's sector needs with an emphasis on poor communities, corporatization, and sector level reform.
By attending this course, utility managers in Nigeria learned how to enable transformational change within their utilities. They also learned how to create a financial and institutional strategy for sustaining utility performance. In addition, they gained fresh and integrated perspectives for effective utility reform through financial tools and lessons learned.
"There is no doubt that the participants learnt a lot from the workshop as expressed at the workshop closing and from the series of calls I have received from the them after the workshop, " said Engr Ajisegiri Benson, Head, Water Sector Reform & PPP, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Nigeria. "We also believe that our water sector will soon make a giant leap if all the workshop recommendations are implemented. We have started making arrangement towards full re-establishment of the Nigeria Water Operators Association which resulted from the workshop."
For the next phases of this engagement, all 36 state utilities have been asked to develop a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). These PIPs will be assessed and all committed utilities that are eager to reform will have the opportunity to participate in WBI's e-learning course on Water Utility Reform and WBI's Leadership Program. The World Bank is preparing a project loan to support the reform process based on the assessment of the PIPs developed by each utility.
Water Utility Reform E-Learning Course
Interest and demand for the in-person executive leadership training "Designing and Implementing Successful Water Utility Reform" has been high in both the World Bank's Africa Region and the Middle East and North Africa (MNA) Region. WBI has therefore designed a Water Utility Reform e-learning course that is offered through the World Bank's e-Institute for deeper reach of the reform knowledge. The e-learning course builds awareness of water sector reform for staff and mid-level management. The knowledge gained through the e-course, combined with the leadership course, enables all interested stakeholders to engage in reform discourse and action.
The Water Utility Reform e-course is divided into four clusters with a total of ten modules. The clusters include:
Politics of Water and Sanitation
Requirements for a Successful Utility Management
Systems for Sustainable Asset Management
Planning for Reform
This new e-course was successfully piloted during the summer of 2012 and future deliveries are scheduled for October 2012 and again in February 2013. For more information about the course, please visit the e-Institute website http://einstitute.worldbank.org/ei/
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