Non-Revenue Water Management in Ghana: The Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Management of water resources has become a major challenge in Ghana. Efforts to address the situation through serious water sector reforms have provided some improvements, with some serious challenges still persisting globally. This paper takes a view of water management systems in Ghana by focusing on some specific issues such as water production, water sales, total cost and their relationship with the non-revenue water (NRW). The paper adopts “correlation theory” of observations from 2003 to 2009 using Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing, Ghana data. The findings reveal that, one major problem confronting water resources management in Ghana among others is lack of proper institutional structures and enforcement agencies. The study also revealed that total revenue and total cost of water provision have negative but moderate correlation with NRW but does not give any indication of how good this relationship might be. Again, it was found that where there are aspects of institutional structures, there are limited enforcement agencies for monitoring to ensure compliance.

Keywords: Non- revenue water, water management, opportunities, challenges, Ghana