144 The Future of Water in African Cities
grating water resources, water supply, and city planning at both the city level and the watershed level, IUWM can help cities adapt to different intensities and frequencies of flood events by incorporating new technologies for flood control and stormwater management. Economic and Institutional Strength In addition to the previous six variables, IUWM also focuses on the potential of institutions to address the different challenges faced by urban areas. The potential of institutions to develop IUWM is linked to the management, and the institutional and legal capacities of cities and water utilities. For this reason, IUWM envisages close cooperation of water utilities with cities and key stakeholders to deliver services to larger sectors of the urban population. Adequate institutional and governance frameworks put in place by local and national governments as well as regulators and water utilities will ensure economic and socially sustainable urban water management.
Selection of Indicators For the seven variables defined previously as relevant to future African cities in the context of IUWM, indicators were selected based on the following criteria: • Indicators should be as representative as possible and cover all aspects of the variable (in terms of completeness, causality, and complementariness). • City-level indicators were preferred so as to enable comparison between cities, and to present a more accurate description of the city-level situation. However, national proxies had to be used in some cases due to data constraints. Similarly, utility-level data varied depending on the utility’s coverage; mostly, coverage was at city-level, but some utilities are national (for example, in Senegal). Nevertheless, for the indicators concerned (see Appendix 3), these proxies were assumed to be valid. • Indicators that were available consistently for all or most of the 31 cities were preferred. • Indicators were selected to be accessible and useful to the end user due to the target audience being both internal to the World Bank and external (city leaders); • The indicator selection process was very much constrained by the availability, consistency, and reliability of the data for the 31 cities, which highlights the need to systematize such data for monitoring and planning purposes.