Can Informal Water Vendors be Trusted? The Evolution of Informality in Kisumu’s Delegated Management Model

In the world’s lower income regions, piped water systems have failed to keep pace with growing populations. A wide variety of informal water vendors are playing an important role in filling these gaps, which are projected to grow as the urban population increases to 2.5 billion by 2050. Though informal water vendors provide essential services that can be agile and locally managed, vending comes with potential risks, including those related to affordability and poor water quality. This has lead scholars and practitioners alike to ask: under what conditions can water vendors be trusted? We unpack this question in Kisumu, Kenya, where consumers are served by a diversity of actors that may work with or independently of the utility. We ask how coordination between the utility and informal water vendors affects the performance of co-produced water services, investigating performance in terms of trust and trustworthiness. Our results show that partnerships with informal providers offer opportunities to leverage social trust and relationships, bolstering the capacity of institutions to deliver on their objectives of safe, affordable water. These insights are important in ensuring the human right to water as rapidly growing cities rely on a patchwork of piped and off-grid water supplies.