150 The Future of Water in African Cities
African Ministers’ Council on Water, country status overviews), the lack of city-specific data on urban water management made the task of creating the indicators and populating the sample of 31 cities more challenging (see Appendix 3 for a sample of sources).
Reliability and Quality of Data The data contained in this general study of 31 cities has to be considered with a degree of caution due to general inconsistencies in definitions, measurements, and data collection methodologies. The inherent complexities of the sector, the difficulties in measuring institutional arrangements, and the validation of the data found added limitations to the data set. The reliability of data and sources also affects the quality of the data used in this study and the different types of analyses that can be derived from the data. Following is a list of several of the main limitations affecting the data set: • The different methodologies used by the different data sources add uncertainty to the data set. • Different metrics and different definitions used by the sources add precision problems, which make the homogenization and integration of the indicators difficult. • The use of different sources for the same indicator and different years adds inconsistencies and complications when homogenizing and normalizing the data to compare the different indicators. • These limitations present a problem when trying to test the robustness of the data with different statistical methods or trying to use the data for more complex statistical analyses. • In some instances, the data was self-reported, which limited its validity.
Validation of Data One question that can arise from the discussion in this section is how can we be sure of the data’s representativeness—in other words, does the data used in this study depict a consistent, useful, and rigorous story. This concern is even more pertinent in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa where the lack of data makes any new study a focus of serious and deep scrutiny. The team is cognizant of the difficulties of finding good quality data for cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The team also attempted to use global and regional sources where possible (for consistency) as opposed to specific documents and other reports where differences in definitions might