Policy Brief n°7 - Community management of rural water supply in Malawi: part of the sustainability problem, not the solution
Community management has been seen since the 1990s as the key to ensuring clean water supply in rural villages in low-income countries. Community management approach is ‘the idea that communities should operate and maintain their
own water supply systems’ (Schouten and Moriarty, 2003). The core of the community management model is the Water Point Committee, typically a group of 6 to 10 villagers elected or otherwise delegated by their community to take responsibility for a water point such as a borehole with handpump, a protected spring, or a gravity-fed tap.
