Co-production as deep engagement: Improving and sustaining access to clean water in Ghana and Nigeria

Introduction

Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of water to livelihood, over 783 million of the world’s population has no access to clean water sources (www.worldbank.org/en/topic/watersupply). The region with the greatest needs (in terms of spending and investment) is Sub-Saharan Africa (World Health Organisation (WHO), 2012). The Sub-Saharan population with no access to clean water source is 319 million people. In rural areas, eight out of ten persons live without “improved drinking water sources” (World Health Organisation (WHO), 2017). The scale of the challenge of providing clean water is enormous and increasingly complex in Africa. According to the World Health Organisation, this is due to a population explosion and flawed public policies (WHO, 2017).

This problem also applies to many rural areas of Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana. While the need for clean water in Ghana and Nigeria is great, governments lack the financial means to address this need (WHO, 2012; Mangai, 2016). This does not imply that improving access to clean water is impossible. On the contrary, this paper argues that engaging citizens through co-production, as is already being done in developed countries in the fields of care-giving, waste management, healthcare and community policing, could be a successful strategy (Vamstad, 2012; Vennik et al., 2016; Bovaird and Loeffler, 2013; Coulter et al., 2008). In general, such co-production can help to improve information flows, optimise policies because of the diversity of views that are incorporated, harness community resources and improve the effectiveness of service delivery (cf. Stewart, 2009, p. 15). Whether such outcomes are achieved depends on the way that co-production is sought. Some have claimed that in order to make co-production a successful practice, it is necessary to ensure that citizens are deeply engaged (Stewart, 2009; Mangai, 2016). The deep engagement of citizens can encourage the diversification of policy advice, thereby increasing the chances of a successful policy or programme (Stewart, 2009).

This study adds to these findings by investigating citizens’ and water professionals’ viewpoints and experiences about what is needed to ensure that co-production is effective in maintaining and sustaining water supply in rural Ghana and Nigeria. The outcomes are based on in-depth interviews with those officials and surveys among the rural population in both countries. Although a previous study, we conducted in the same countries indicated that a major factor in the explanation of widespread co-production in local healthcare facilities is whether people are asked to contribute, this study indicates that this factor is a crude composite of the mind-set on the part of the officials, and whether or not deep engagement is created on the part of the populace.

The research question that guides this study on engaging citizens in the co-production of clean water provision is the following:

The following secondary questions arise from this main question:

Ostrom’s (1996a, b) research provided a basis for the framework for our analysis. As she already found in the 1990s, “physical facilities do not operate or maintain themselves automatically. Nor is the allocation of trained personnel sufficient. Social capital is a necessary complement for physical and human capital to have a long-standing impact” (Ostrom, 1996a, p. 3). This paper substantially draws from Ostrom’s finding based on her research into effective co-production in water and sanitation in “urban and peri-urban” communities in Brazil and similar co-production in Sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. Ghana and Nigeria. Especially her observation that “[w]hen co-production is discouraged […] by creating chaotic changes in who was responsible for funding and running a […] system, and by top-down administrative command as the style for all decision making, only the most determined citizens will persist in coproductive activities” (Ostrom, 1996a, b, p. 1078) triggered this research. Whereas Ostrom’s research focussed on education and the maintenance of peri-urban infrastructure, this investigation is on the co-production in rural water supply in Ghana and Nigeria. The mind-set of officials, their interpretation of national regulations, and the way they induce or discourage citizens to make a contribution in the water supply might make a huge difference in the inclination to co-produce and the actual co-production of citizens in the maintenance of water supplies. The varying ways in which officials engage with the people, and the varying engagement among the people to co-produce one might expect follows from that, resulted in the research questions given above.

In the next section, we will review the philosophical framework of citizen “deep engagement” in public service provision, and also address the practicalities of citizen engagement, the forms of engagement found and the impact of such forms of engagement in clean water access and sustainability in the two countries studied. In the final section, we will discuss our findings and present final conclusions.

Co-production and deep engagement

Co-production was originally conceptualised by a development economist (Ostrom, 1996a, b), and is now widely used by public administration scholars to describe the advantages of collaboration between citizens and public officials in public service delivery (Brandsen and Honingh, 2015; Whitaker, 1980; Bovaird, 2007; Weick, 1995). In an effort to harmonise the conceptual understanding of co-production from a public administration point of view, a recent article by Brandsen and Honingh (2015, p. 431) on “Distinguishing different types of Co-production” collates the various definitions of co-production in public administration literature and presents the following definition of co-production: “the relationship between a paid employee of an Organisation and (groups of) individual citizens, which requires a direct and active contribution from these citizens to the work of the Organisation”. According to this view, citizens are not just to be seen as the beneficiaries of public services, but also as service contributors to those services. Their skills, knowledge, assets, income, experience and capabilities are needed for the effective delivery of any public services (Bovaird, 2007; Holmes, 2011).

Co-production has become one of the main themes of the discipline of public administration, serving as a basis for many reforms to public service delivery. The delivery of services is seen not just as the preserve of public professionals, but citizens and communities are also seen as the major players in managing and delivering those services (Joshi and Moore, 2004; Ostrom, 1996a, b; Bovaird, 2007; Bovaird and Loeffler, 2013).

One of the main questions in this field is how to achieve such co-production and one of the answers to that question is given by Stewart. She points out the need to create engagement among citizens. Stewart (2009, p. 3) conceptualises deep engagement as “deliberate strategies for involving those outside government in the policy process”. She refers to the policy process as “ways of making policy decisions and ways of implementing them”. She alludes to the processes specifically as “horizontal engagement”, i.e. the process “through which those in government (the political and bureaucratic executives) relate to those who are not in direct power relations with them”.

In psychological theory, engagement refers to more than just motivation or satisfaction; in that discipline, it is defined as: “[…] a positive, fulfilling […] state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). As Kahn (1990) notes: “in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances” (p. 694). Deep engagement is a phenomenon that allows for the participation of citizens and other stakeholders in the affairs of government. This is done with regard to the recognition of citizens’ rights and duties to participate actively in services that benefit them directly. Citizen engagement is seen as a catalyst for achieving the aim of such collaboration (Stewart, 2009; Holmes, 2011).

Determining the extent of engagement, and particularly how it occurs in practice and its impact on policy change, are important factors in understanding the concept of deep engagement. Stewart (2009) asserts that the mind-set of public servants and their political masters is the main factor that determines engagement, particularly with regard to how it occurs in practice and the policy changes that it may bring about. Stewart’s explanation of the forms of engagement provides an elaborate understanding of the extent to which citizens are engaged in service delivery. In order to elaborate the concept of engagement, Stewart (2009) distinguishes five levels of engagement (see Table I) based on whether citizens are informed, consulted, involved in deliberation, involved in partnerships with government or even given the power and authority to make key decisions themselves. Similar levels had earlier been distinguished by Arnstein (1969).

The particular feature of Stewart’s continuum is that her levels of engagement are cumulative. Consultation presumes information sharing, for instance, and co-production presumes partnership, joint deliberation, consultation as well as information sharing. The extent to which interaction between public servants and citizens is comprehensive determines the level of engagement (Table I). In a one-way exchange, information can be passed to citizens while a two-way activity means getting feedback, opinions and comments through a consultation process.

In Stewart’s model of engagement, consultation implies the exchange of information. The exchange of information between public servants and citizens is mainly done in order to evaluate reactions, but these may not necessarily be incorporated into decision-making. With consultation as a form of engagement, finding out the preferences of citizens contributes to decision-making, but does not have a decisive influence on the decision made by public servants in relation to that policy, programme or service. The aim of consulting citizens is simply to understand which preferences exist regarding the policy, programme or service.

Deliberation is viewed as a “vehicle of learning” because it involves the processes by which the preferences of the citizen become known and actually incorporated in the decisions to be made. A weak form of deliberation is simply a form of citizen consultation. It incorporates citizens’ opinions into the principal policy information. Citizens’ juries or deliberative polls can be used to structure discussions. Therefore, weak deliberation indicates that interests of the population may be taken into account. Strong deliberation, by contrast, emphasises the rights of the group, who they represent and the substance of the decisions made (Stewart, 2009).

Partnership as a form of engagement is the result of a contractual agreement between government agencies and other stakeholders (citizens and interest groups). Depending on the scale and type of the agreement, the contract leads to a form of implementation that involves both public and private partners (including citizens) and it therefore has direct policy implications. According to Stewart (2009, p. 6), “the terms of this form of engagement are defined by the work to be done and can involve service delivery and influence policy resources/programmes”.

The last form of engagement, participatory governance delegation, allows for the meaningful and independent engagement of citizens in policy-making and the implementation of programmes. This form of engagement determines the scale and depth to which bureaucratic players involve citizens and other stakeholders. According to Stewart (2009), a network of relationships explains the depth and extent of the stakeholder’s involvement.

In the same line of thought, Holmes (2011) states that “for those governments and advocates with a genuine commitment to citizen engagement, the term co-production has become familiar”. He argues that the concept of co-production is a good example of a deep engagement practice and that this is a prerequisite for co-production. The distinction of co-production from other engagement concepts is reflected in the commitment of both public professionals and citizens to collaborating on policy-making, design and the delivery of services. Deep engagement therefore needs to be promoted at every stage of a policy cycle, from policy preparation, through decision-making to policy implementation and policy evaluation. This is a somewhat broader conception of co-production, in line with Bovaird (2007), as opposed to the common approach of focussing primarily on policy implementation/actual service delivery and the involvement of citizens and societal groups in just that phase of the policy process. Following Stewart, it is hypothesised that such co-production depends on the engagement created in the previous phases of the policy process. This requires an inclination among public officials to involve the public by informing them, consulting them, making decisions jointly, creating partnerships and ultimately giving citizens the power and authority to contribute to these services independently.

With “deep engagement”, public services can be managed more efficiently and effectively and meet users’ needs in a better way (Bovaird, 2007; Holmes, 2011; Stewart, 2009). Holmes (2011, p. 23) asserts that co-production is “to the extent that ‘public administrations’ are vehicles for expressing the values of preferences of citizens, communities and societies”.

We investigated whether Ghana and Nigeria differ in these respects and whether this could explain why the level of co-production otherwise “deep engagement” in the two countries varies. The next section describes how we investigated this question, and the subsequent section presents the outcomes of our investigation.

Methodology

This study presents part of a wide range of 720 survey interviews conducted in Ghana and Nigeria in the Spring of 2016 to enhance our understanding of the practice of citizen engagement in improving service delivery, particularly in water management and healthcare. In the water sector, we were looking for the ways in which citizen engagement can lead to improved water resources at the local level of governance in Nigeria and Ghana. We conducted a semi-structured survey among 180 citizens (i.e. households) and 12 in-depth interviews with water professionals.

As for the public officials – in-depth interviews were conducted with the directors and frontline managers. The topics to be discussed were determined beforehand, but the manner in which the interview proceeded determined in what way and in what order the questions were posed. The topics included questions about how the respondents proceeded to provide clean water, the challenges faced, the initiatives and innovations to improve service delivery, the support they received, the information provided, the importance they attached to their work and in the end specific questions about citizen involvement, and their ideas for improving co-production. All the interviews lasted for an hour.

The citizen survey was conducted using semi-structured questions with some questions having pre-fixed response categories. First, a few background questions were asked to determine the respondent’s age, socio-economic status and so on. The interview continued by asking about the importance of the quality of the service for the respondent. This was done to show the respondents the relevance of the interview. Subsequently, we asked them about substantive aspects of the water supply: the challenges they face to get clean water and who they think is responsible for the quality of the services provided. Then the questions relevant to this study were asked: whether they had received information from the policy makers/public officials, whether the policy makers/public officials asked for feedback on the water supply and whether they were consulted as citizens, whether they were involved in the decision-making process, whether their involvement was requested by the policy maker and finally whether they are actually involved in maintaining the water supply. In this way, we were able to build up a picture of each of the levels of co-production proposed by Stewart.

A designated primary sample unit was mapped out before going to the field to conduct the interviews. We sampled households at random for the survey interview. The sampling starting point for the household survey was a random selection using a residential map of the area. In every household, an interview was conducted with a randomly selected respondent: an adult in the household with a recent date of birth. The only selection criterion was that the respondents had to be 18 years or older. In the subsequent household, a respondent of a different gender was interviewed to prevent gender bias. After the first interview, the interviewer then moved to the next household by skipping two households to allow for randomisation. Gender alternation continued until the interviewer had completed the required number of households to be interviewed. The total number of households interviewed was 180, out of which 90 interviews were conducted in Nigeria and the other half in Ghana. Below is a summary of our research design.

The interviews were not based on a focus group discussion as a source of data. Our approach avoided the outcomes to be biased due to potential concerns about “loyalty-pressure” or “mind-guards” during the interview. We had individualised in-depth discussion with the respondents about the topics concerned. This is needed, as Ostrom (1996a, b) already found that service delivery arrangements in developing countries are mostly organised and delivered in a traditional public administration setting, characterised by hierarchical control (cf. Mangai, 2016). Although it is imaginable that respondents discussed the interviews among one another, we may safely assume that this took place after the interviews were conducted, and that this did not result in bias in answering the interview questions or in a kind of group-think.

Another problem we took care of was to prevent that the respondents – especially the professionals – were not retailing conventional stories. Therefore we asked for substantive personal experiences of them. As will be shown in the outcome section, this did not prevent that the narratives of the officials within both countries appear similar, thereby suggesting a notion of a conventional stories. The reason for the possible uniformity in the respondent’s narratives within both countries is most probably because of the national coordination of the water resource management in the rural areas. Nonetheless, we were very particular in capturing the personal experiences of the front-liners (Table II).

Analysis of results

Because the differences in actual co-production in the two countries under investigation is so huge, it might be expected that the context in which our research was conducted is important, that is the formal structure for rural water provision in Ghana and Nigeria.

Conclusion

This paper began with the question of which factors can explain the extent to which water professionals work to engage citizens and are willing to collaborate in improving access to clean water in developmental countries such as Ghana and Nigeria?

One of our key findings is that all citizens are willing to contribute one or more of their resources to improve their access to clean water. Citizens in Ghana are particularly willing to contribute their money and time, while in Nigeria, citizens are willing to contribute part of their time. Water professionals in Ghana have taken advantage of citizens’ willingness to engage in water projects. Our research shows that the engagement of citizens in Ghana is ongoing and has been institutionalised. This is not the case in Nigeria. While the willingness of Nigerian citizens to become engaged is also relatively high, the ability of water professionals in Nigeria to profit from this is weak.

The sustained collaboration between water professionals and citizens in Ghana has resulted in sustained access to clean water for that country’s citizens. The durability and sustainability of water facilities in Ghana is the result of collaboration between water professionals and a community-appointed committee (i.e. WATSAN). This collaboration was cited unanimously by water professionals in Ghana. This mind-set on the part of the officials and the institutionalisation of that mind-set has reduced the rate at which rural Ghanaians become infected with water-borne diseases as indicated by the respondents.

Although we noticed that in the two countries studied water professionals are seeking to provide improved water sources to the rural communities, this effort is not enough to guarantee the sustained provision of clean water. By this, we mean that installing water facilities to a community is only part of the solution to access to clean water over the long term. A continuous flow of clean water is just as important for a healthy community as building boreholes and water pumps. The only way people will continue to have access to clean water is when these facilities function properly over the long term. We found that in Ghana, rural communities with water facilities continue to have clean water because of the way citizens are engaged in managing the water facilities. In Nigeria, by contrast, many of the water facilities do not function adequately, compelling people to use surface water from streams, ponds and rivers. In Nigeria, little has been achieved in terms of improved water sources due to poorly organised water resource management, poor maintenance of water facilities and the failure to involve citizens.

The variation in the access to clean water in Ghana and Nigeria is largely due to the degree of engagement in these countries that is created by the public officials. We have used Stewart’s (2009) continuum of engagement to understand how citizens are engaged by water professionals in the management of water facilities to improve access to clean water in rural communities. According to Stewart, public servants can interact with citizens in one way or multiple ways depending on the type of engagement. While there are different forms of engagement, we understand from our analysis that the extent of the engagement of citizens makes a significant difference to the sustained availability of clean water in Ghana and Nigeria. We have seen that the level at which citizens are engaged in clean water provision has a decisive impact on the co-production of citizens in ensuring the sustainability of the clean water supply itself.

In Ghana, all forms of engagement are explored by water professionals to engage the citizens. This implies that water professionals inform, consult, deliberate and partner with local people, and coproducing water resources with local people during the planning, management and monitoring of the water facilities. In the interview transcripts, Ghanaian water officials appeared to be categorical about their personal involvement with the people in organising durbar meetings to plan and install water facility in communities. In Nigeria, however, the most efficient forms of engagement, i.e. partnership and co-production are absent. Water professionals in Nigeria do not engage with the local people to co-produce clean water, especially when it comes to managing the water facilities. As our interviews showed, this is simply not a part of their mind-set, as they are concerned first with the question how they themselves can comply with the law and how they can induce people to enable them – as officials – to do their job adequately.

Another advantage of collaborating with the communities as seen in Ghana is in the acquisition of additional water facilities in growing communities. As the custodian of the water facility, the WATSAN committees are required to be socially accountable to local people, resulting in the prudent utilisation of the money generated from the sale of clean water.

We conclude that there is a deep engagement among rural Ghanaian citizens to co-produce clean water through the effective management of their water facilities. The local people are not only inclined to help out, but also actually do help out in maintaining the water supply. Water professionals and citizens co-produce clean water supplies using an organised facility management, resulting in sustained access to clean water. Ghana has a water management model that is citizen-centric, referred to as the “Community Ownership, Operation, and Maintenance Model”. The water management model effectively ensures sustained access to clean water for domestic use. Citizens have assumed a management role, enabling water facilities in rural Ghana to be managed successfully.

The Ghanaian water management model is built around a deliberate government policy to promote the engagement of citizens, assign maintenance responsibilities, ensure community ownership of the water facility and the acceptance of payments for water and social accountability. In Ghana, we see a bottom-up approach to water provision which is sustainable. We see a regular and sustained relationship between water professionals and citizens in their rural communities. Engaging citizens in clean water provision and facility management is at the heart of policy formulation by the responsible water agencies for rural water provision. Contrary to the traditional public administration perspective of the unwillingness of public servants to engage the citizens in their services (Ostrom, 1996a, b; Holmes, 2011; De Vries, 2016; Joshi and Moore, 2004), water professionals in Ghana are optimistic about engaging citizens in clean water provision in Ghana. The “pay-as-you-fetch policy” is the contribution of the citizens towards a sustainable water supply.

The form of engagement that we found in Nigeria is much weaker. The inclination to co-produce is still visible, but the actual co-production by the local people through investing their time and energy in the maintenance of the water supply is absent. This has had a negative impact on the availability and sustainability of improved water sources in Nigeria. While it is the responsibility of government to provide basic services such as clean water, we see an opportunity for water professionals in Nigeria to utilise the willingness demonstrated by citizens to co-produce a clean water supply. However, this would involve abandoning the procedural, technocratic point of departure. Rather, public officials should focus on building trust, taking citizens seriously, moving away from prioritising bureaucratic procedures and seeing only one’s own supervisors as stakeholders. Such a change in the mind-set on the part of the professionals could create a much-needed framework for sharing information, consulting and listening to citizens, involving them in decisions, establishing partnerships and eventually allowing them the power and authority to maintain and sustain their own water supply.

The communalities in the mind-set within the two countries and the large differences found between the two countries might be seen as too good to be true. This huge variance can also point to another issue, namely that this common mind-set among officials within both countries is created by the institutionalisation of the maintenance of the water supply at the national level through national policies. The differences in national policies and the rules and regulations through which they are implemented might have induced the communalities in the mind-sets of the officials responsible for the water supply within both countries and the differences therein between the countries. To answer the question whether there are indeed arguments to substantiate that claim is the aim of a subsequent paper on this issue.