Pro-Poor Strategies for Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Services Delivery in Africa Piers Cross, Regional Team Leader, Water and Sanitation Program Africa The World Bank Kenya, Hill Park Blg, Nairobi, PO Box 30577, [email protected]

Water utilities in Africa find it increasingly difficult to provide adequate services to the needy areas: their core business operations are often stagnant, compounded by a dramatic rise in periurban and poor settlements. To address these challenges, the Water and Sanitation Program Africa has designed a work program to disseminate the best practice in pro-poor service development and to help utilities and municipal authorities to develop roadmaps to the MDGs for their service areas. Activities will primarily be directed at: (i) helping utilities and municipal authorities to include pro-poor objectives in their reform; and, (ii) working jointly with local partners, CBOs and NGOs, and SSPs to develop strategies and actions specifically targeting informal settlements. WSP-AF will focus on utilities that are engaged in reform or planning to do so. This program builds on support developed for Water Utility Partnership (WUP#5). Key entry points for pro-poor strategies: (i) Pro-poor tariffs and financing mechanisms for service improvement, (ii) Institutional arrangements to improve services to the urban poor, (iii) Pro-poor transaction design (including regulation and monitoring), (iv) Advocacy and communications regarding the urban poor, and (v) Consumer voice and civil society engagement.