Water Privatization and Social Citizenship: The Case of Urban Water Sector in Ghana

Abstract

The impact of globalization on citizenship has recently gathered considerable academic attention. In the literature it is assumed that globalization will alter citizenship, either by constraining or enabling it. The article explores this question through the relationship between water privatization and social citizenship. It asks to what extent privatization, as an aspect of globalization, alters people's social right to water. Drawing from interviews and documents collected in 2008 and 2009, and a review of secondary literature, the article argues that in Ghana's capital Accra, water privatization left people's social citizenship relatively unchanged. The study shows how social citizenship is rooted in its historical context of unequal access to water in a post-colonial society, and how the privatization policy was mediated by this context, bringing relatively little change. Instead, many flexible, self-enforced social citizenships are in place which challenge the universal notions of Western political theory and which continued to operate under the privatization arrangement. The article concludes that in some cases, globalization influences citizenship less than previous literature argues, and suggests that for making balanced arguments, debates about water privatization need to take the contextual dynamics of specific settings more carefully into account.

Keywords:

• Globalization
• privatization
• urban water supply
• social citizenship
• Ghana

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Tiina Kontinen, Juhani Koponen, Cor Lievers, Henri Onodera, Lindsay Whitfield, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article, and the participants of the working group on North-South Learning and Citizenship Transformations in the Citizenship Transformations in a Global World Conference (Helsinki, February 2012) for their questions and comments. The author acknowledges financial support for the field work from Liikesivistysrahasto and Nordic Africa Institute.

Notes

Bereketeab (2009) makes a similar argument about the universal notion of ‘civil society’ and the challenges of applying it to African contexts.

By a narrow definition, ‘privatization’ refers to the transfer of the assets and ownership of a public company to the private sector (divestiture). In the water privatization literature, however, the term is used interchangeably with private sector participation (PSP) and public–private partnerships (PPP) to refer to any type of contracting between the public and the private sector: outsourcing, service contracts, management contracts, concessions, or lease contracts (for a review and definitions, see Budds & McGranahan, 2003). As Bakker (2010, pp. xv–xvi) points out, the terms are not neutral: speaking of ‘privatization’ tends to be associated with opponents of the policy, while proponents highlight the ‘partnership’ aspect and maintain that in most cases public assets are not sold. For practical reasons, I use the terms privatization, PSP, and PPP as synonyms, but without the intention of attaching the above-mentioned connotations to them.

The Washington consensus is the equivalent of the market oriented economic policies which became prevalent, to various extents, in Western countries after the economic crises of the 1970s (Fine, 2001). Under this notion markets were perceived as superior to states in wealth creation, and corresponding policy prescriptions included market and trade liberalization, fiscal discipline, removal of subsidies, and cutting public expenditure. These policies were introduced in Africa in the form of structural adjustment programmes as a condition to financial assistance in the 1980s and 1990s (Fine, 2001, p. 3).

For activists and organizations involved in the global campaign against water privatization see, for example, the Blue Planet Project (http://www.blueplanetproject.net/index.html) and Water Justice (http://www.waterjustice.org/?mi=15). For a review of public resistance against water privatization, see Hall, Lobina and De la Motte (2005). For a body of critical academic research on water privatization, see, for example, Public Services International Research Unit (www.psiru.org), and for a favourable approach to water privatization see The International Federation of Private Water Operators, AquaFed (www.aquafed.org).

This is not to say that there were no states or political communities in non-Western societies before colonialism. For example, in Ghana there were well-established, centralized states with complicated administrative and accountability structures at the time of colonial conquest (Gocking, 2005). However, in the sense in which citizenship is understood in contemporary political theory, it is associated with de-colonization.

Case studies are particularly suitable for exploring complex questions such as the relationship between public services and citizens, because due to their methodological flexibility case studies enable the incorporation of historical, social, political, ideological, and other factors into the analysis (Mabry, 2008, p. 217). Ghana's urban water sector was purposefully selected as a ‘typical’ case or instance of water privatization in Sub-Saharan Africa. It should be noted that due to their context-specific nature, case studies provide but a limited potential for directly generalizing their findings (Lieberson, 1991; Mabry, 2008, p. 223). Instead, concerning the specific object of study like water supply, cautious generalizations to the immediate surroundings can be made, such as from individuals to residential area, or from residential areas to the city (Mabry, 2008).

Interviews with citizens: (1) Tabora, 15 October 2008, 1 man; (2) Tabora, 11 November 2008, 1 woman; (3) Nii Boi Town, 11 November 2008, 1 man; (4) Shukura, 15 November 2008, 2 men; (5) Madina, 20 November 2009, 1 man; (6) Madina, 27 November 2009, 12 men, 3 women; (7) Osu, 6 December 2009, 4 men; (8) Tabora, 12 December 2009, 3 men; altogether 26 persons because two people are included twice. Interviews with water company representatives: (9) AVRL, Operations Director 3 December 2008; (10) AVRL, Customer Care Director 9 December 2008; (11) GWCL, Regional Distribution Manager, Accra West, 11 December 2009; (12) Former Customer Care Director of AVRL, 1 June 2012. All interviews were carried out in Accra, Ghana, except number 12 in Zwolle, the Netherlands.

Another caveat concerns the group interviews in Madina and Osu. In Madina, interviewees took the event as a community meeting rather than an interview, which meant that some people left and others joined the discussion in the middle of the interview. Of the 15 persons who attended, all spoke at some point and the group was rather unanimous about the questions. But it cannot be stated that everything that was said represents the views of all 15 persons because some of them were not present for the entire duration of the meeting. In Osu, 10 people were present in the group interview but only 4 of them spoke, so only those four people are included in the total number of interviewees.

Former figure is from Ghana Water Company Limited (2008) press release; latter figure is from Ministry of Works and Housing (2009, p. 34).

Management contract between GWCL and Vitens Rand Water Services BV/AVRL, November 2005.

NRW is ‘the difference between the volume of water put into a water distribution system and the volume that is billed by customers’ (Kingdom, Liemberger & Marin, 2006, p. 1). NRW consists of physical losses (leakages), commercial losses (inaccurate meter reading and illegal connections), and unbilled authorized consumption (water used for firefighting and for certain consumer groups).

There are a number of other regulations with implications for water, such as legislation on mining, fishing, irrigation, and environmental protection, as well as customary law (Adamson et al., 1985; Agyenim & Gupta, 2010; Eguavoen & Spalthoff, 2010).

The interview quotes are only illustrations of the broader themes and should not be considered as the only evidence for the statements.

Management contract between GWCL and Vitens Rand Water Services BV/AVRL, November 2005.