Scale-up of urban water services which meet the needs of low-income populations is a pressing challenge in most African cities. Ensuring the quality, reliability and affordability of water services to low-income residents typically remain elusive goals.

The WSUP experience in Maputo and Antananarivo (2008-2012) suggests that useful strategies include the following:

• overcome the prevailing pattern whereby connections are unaffordable for the poor, and engage simultaneously to support and encourage a pro-poor agenda
• develop capacity at all levels to strengthen management and ensure accountability, within policy of formal cost recovery
• recognise that contractual responsibilities and incentives for delegated management take time to become clear, so that contracts will need flexibility to evolve over time
• address non-revenue water, highlighting that NRW reduction can increase revenues and enable improvement of services to low-income areas and
• adopt a realistic and incremental approach to achieving full water supply services at scale