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The aid illusion: Why Africa's water sector must reclaim its fiscal sovereignty

By The Standard January 12, 2026

Source: The Standard

The aid illusion: Why Africa's water sector must reclaim its fiscal sovereignty

School going children wade through the flooded Marigat–Loruk Road on September 3, 2025, after rising watersfrom Lake Baringo cut off transport routes.[Kipsang Joseph, Standard]“Development institutions exist not to replace markets, but to make them possible.” When the late Ibrahim F. I. Shihata, the former World Bank Senior Vice President and General Counsel, offered this counsel, he was describing a blueprint for sustainability. Today, as a wave of fiscal retrenchment sweeps through Western capitals, his words read less like a guide and more like a warning. Following a year of sharp aid reductions by US and European donors, President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the United States will withdraw funding from 66 multilateral and UN‑linked entities has triggered fresh alarm across Africa’s water sector.The diagnosis has since been echoed by African leaders themselves. In 2022, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo captured the problem succinctly: “We have built our development on outdated financing models that no longer work for our economies.” In many countries, donor contributions historically finance up to 70 per cent of capital investment in water infrastructure; in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, external aid accounts for over 60 per cent of public water spending. Utilities and governments alike now face a brutal reality: Aid is no longer a reliable backstop, and the sector was never structured to survive without it.Follow The Standard
channel
on WhatsAppThe institutional trapFor too long, water has been treated as too essential to fail, yet too political to reform. Subsidies were frequently used to paper over cracks in governance, while episodic projects were prioritised over the long-term building of resilient institutions. Today, the symptoms of this failure are visible in stalled investment pipelines and a widening inequity between those on the formal grid and those in the informal economy paying aPoverty Premiumfor basic access.Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

“Development institutions exist not to replace markets, but to make them possible.” When the late Ibrahim F. I. Shihata, the former World Bank Senior Vice President and General Counsel, offered this counsel, he was describing a blueprint for sustainability. Today, as a wave of fiscal retrenchment sweeps through Western capitals, his words read less like a guide and more like a warning. Following a year of sharp aid reductions by US and European donors, President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the United States will withdraw funding from 66 multilateral and UN‑linked entities has triggered fresh alarm across Africa’s water sector.The diagnosis has since been echoed by African leaders themselves. In 2022, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo captured the problem succinctly: “We have built our development on outdated financing models that no longer work for our economies.” In many countries, donor contributions historically finance up to 70 per cent of capital investment in water infrastructure; in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, external aid accounts for over 60 per cent of public water spending. Utilities and governments alike now face a brutal reality: Aid is no longer a reliable backstop, and the sector was never structured to survive without it.Follow The Standard
channel
on WhatsAppThe institutional trapFor too long, water has been treated as too essential to fail, yet too political to reform. Subsidies were frequently used to paper over cracks in governance, while episodic projects were prioritised over the long-term building of resilient institutions. Today, the symptoms of this failure are visible in stalled investment pipelines and a widening inequity between those on the formal grid and those in the informal economy paying aPoverty Premiumfor basic access.Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

The diagnosis has since been echoed by African leaders themselves. In 2022, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo captured the problem succinctly: “We have built our development on outdated financing models that no longer work for our economies.” In many countries, donor contributions historically finance up to 70 per cent of capital investment in water infrastructure; in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, external aid accounts for over 60 per cent of public water spending. Utilities and governments alike now face a brutal reality: Aid is no longer a reliable backstop, and the sector was never structured to survive without it.Follow The Standard
channel
on WhatsAppThe institutional trapFor too long, water has been treated as too essential to fail, yet too political to reform. Subsidies were frequently used to paper over cracks in governance, while episodic projects were prioritised over the long-term building of resilient institutions. Today, the symptoms of this failure are visible in stalled investment pipelines and a widening inequity between those on the formal grid and those in the informal economy paying aPoverty Premiumfor basic access.Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

The institutional trapFor too long, water has been treated as too essential to fail, yet too political to reform. Subsidies were frequently used to paper over cracks in governance, while episodic projects were prioritised over the long-term building of resilient institutions. Today, the symptoms of this failure are visible in stalled investment pipelines and a widening inequity between those on the formal grid and those in the informal economy paying aPoverty Premiumfor basic access.Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

For too long, water has been treated as too essential to fail, yet too political to reform. Subsidies were frequently used to paper over cracks in governance, while episodic projects were prioritised over the long-term building of resilient institutions. Today, the symptoms of this failure are visible in stalled investment pipelines and a widening inequity between those on the formal grid and those in the informal economy paying aPoverty Premiumfor basic access.Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

Fiscal pressures compound the challenge. Low- and middle-income countries are servicing over US$1.4 trillion in external debt, consuming between 20% and 30% of domestic revenues, often more than national budgets for water, health, and education combined. When budgets tighten, water is adjusted first because it is institutionally weak. The aid-led model masked this weakness by financing assets off-budget and creating parallel delivery systems, effectively suspending market functionality rather than enabling it.The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

The FFD4 reckoning: From projects to policyThis reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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This reckoning arrives as the global community internalises the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). The Sevilla Commitment signalled a definitive shift from traditional aid toward reforming the international financial architecture for debt sustainability. We are seeing early signs of a structural pivot in Kenya’s adoption of zero-based budgeting, which exemplifies how governments can strategically allocate resources to make every shilling count, prioritising innovation in bulk supply, transmission, and storage over fragmented, project-based spending.This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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This alignment necessitates a move toward Socially Responsible Commercialisation. This involves adopting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) that professionalise service delivery while explicitly avoiding the pitfalls of outright privatisation by keeping assets under public ownership. These new investment contracts must be structurally reflective of social mandates, ensuring that commercial efficiency is balanced with pro-poor service level agreements that prevent the exclusion of the vulnerable.The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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The fiscal authority gapSub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest water coverage globally. According to the 2025 WHO/UNICEF JMP report, only 32 per cent of the region’s population has access to safely managed drinking water. This coverage is far below Latin America, where countries such as Brazil maintain over 90 per cent access despite fiscal constraints. Brazil’s success, alongside Rwanda’s centralised revenue pooling and Chile’s municipal-level markets, proves that fiscal sovereignty enables resilience where aid cannot.Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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Yet, the dominant response has remained technocratic: more projects, more pilots, morede-risking. As Alex Money has argued, the water sector has spent too long attempting to eliminate risk rather than leveraging its growth, demand, and demonstrated gains. In doing so, it has failed to present itself as an investable sector capable of attracting serious capital at scale. What is missing is not innovation or finance, but fiscal authority. Bulk supply and treatment are macro-critical economic infrastructure, yet they are routinely financed as discretionary social spending.A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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A path toward sovereign valueA viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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A viable path forward begins upstream fiscally as much as physically. Core water infrastructure must be treated as sovereign or sub-sovereign economic assets, financed through long-term public borrowing and domestic capital markets. When bulk costs are socialised, unit costs fall, and utilities gain predictable revenue bases. To bridge the capital gap, targeted debt-for-water swaps can provide the first-loss capital needed for large-scale infrastructure, allowing for the pooling of informal demand into bankable cash flows.Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletterBy clicking on theSIGN UPbutton, you agree to ourTerms & Conditionsand thePrivacy PolicySIGN UPAid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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Aid still has a role, but it must change. Its comparative advantage lies in catalysis: underwriting regulatory reform and supporting revenue management rather than perpetual service delivery. Guarantees and risk-sharing instruments, modelled on the logic that underpinned institutions such as MIGA, can accelerate this transition, but they cannot replace sovereign commitment.Stay Informed, Stay Empowered: Download the Standard ePaper App!The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
channel
on WhatsApp

The era of predictable aid is over. Water is a human right, enshrined in roughly 15.65 per centof global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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of global constitutions, but rights without fiscal frameworks are promises without pipes. Resilience will emerge only where water is recognised as economic infrastructure, protected within fiscal frameworks, and governed through institutions capable of shaping inclusive markets. The question is no longer whether the poor can pay for water-they already do, often excessively. The real question is whether governments and their water institutions can reclaim fiscal sovereignty by transforming necessity into demand, and demand into lasting public value, measured not only in public health gains but also national economic growth.The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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The writer is Water Governance and Markets Systems Development expertFollow The Standard
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Source: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/environment-climate/article/2001538321/the-aid-illusion-why-africas-water-sector-must-reclaim-its-fiscal-sovereignty