Scholars of economic development have always hinted that the urbanisation process in the developing world does not follow the historical patterns discerned in the developed world where a strong relationship between a country's gross domestic product and urbanisation had been observed. To confirm or refute this thesis, this study considers the pattern of relationships between the national economic growth rate and urbanisation rates in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. Comparison is made between SSA countries and emerging and developed economies. Results indicate that whereas the traditional thesis still holds for SSA countries (i.e. they urbanise without economic growth), new antithetical trends are also discernible where urbanisation takes place with economic growth, thereby revealing a whole new dimension of urbanisation and economic growth relational patterns in Africa.

This paper considers how the government of Kenya’s plans to privatize water supplies in urban areas could ensure that the needs of those living in informal settlements and of others with inadequate water provision are served. The need for reform in the water sector is evident from the years of poor performance and the growing numbers lacking piped provision. The government has chosen privatization as the main policy direction. However, privatization can cause the needs of the unserved and of low-income groups in general to be ignored. This paper discusses various policy options to secure advantage for these groups, within the framework of a privatized water sector. These include participatory sector planning, social tarification, contractual clauses, water trust funds and support for alternative water suppliers.

The world over, the role and eligibility of the state in the provision of water supply is increasingly coming into question. Policy makers and analysts are advocating the abdication of the state in favour of private participation. This is expected to bring with it a host of benefits to all the stakeholders concerned. Kenya is one of the developing countries that have endeavoured to privatize their water sectors. Kenya has done this by enactment and implementation of the Water Act of 2002. The paper carries out an analysis of the water institutions being created under the new legislation. This has been done against conventional policy and conceptual frameworks. Overall, the institutional set-up is found to be public sector-oriented rather than private sector-oriented. Recommendations are made for legislative review for mainstreaming private sector participation.

One of the services that have been poorly provided in the urban areas in Kenya is water and sanitation. There are many reasons, which can be attributed to poor provision of water and sanitation as undertaken by the local authorities in Kenya. The path to remedy the poor provision of water and sanitation has been charted in privatisation in the form of commercialisation. Commercialisation in Kenya was first implemented on an experimental basis in three urban areas: Nyeri, Eldoret and Nakuru. This involved formation of a publicly owned water company as an agent of the local authority. The companies formed as a result were set up and operated according to the provisions of the Companies Act chapter 486 of the Laws of Kenya. This paper looks at the genesis of privatisation of water services based on the contributions of GTZ, UWASAM and KFW to an experiment in formulating and implementing privatisation in the three urban areas. The outcome of the experiment is then compared to the current on-going exercise of water privatisation by local authorities. Privatisation of water and sanitation services is expected to solve the problem of poor and inadequate service provision that hitherto characterised urban areas. It would do this by achieving its goals of decentralisation and economic viability. However, the outcome of the experiment indicated that privatisation failed to achieve these two fundamental goals. For that matter, privatisation failed to meet its intended objectives of solving the woes of service provision in urban areas. A close examination of the current privatisation indicates that the operation has again failed to achieve its fundamental goals of decentralisation and economic viability. The failure of the current exercise in meeting the objectives of ridding the urban areas of water woes can therefore be predicted on this basis.

Construction is a strategic industry in developing economies like Kenya. In order for construction to ably perform this role, there is a need to provide information on its various economic aspects including raw materials, products, processes, finance and labour. Construction statistics of Kenya have been evaluated in order to ascertain their adequacy in terms of scope, portrait, reliability and responsiveness in their coverage of the construction industry. Official statistics published in the annual Statistical Abstract were reviewed according to these adequacy criteria. The findings are that: the scope of construction statistics is narrowly defined making the statistical portrait of the sector incomplete; the statistics are also unreliable in terms of quality and unresponsive to economical challenges of inflation, structural adjustment policies and the decline of the public sector's role in the construction industry. A participatory statistical governance framework is recommended in order to improve the scope of statistics and alleviate the attendant problems, such as the incomplete portrait, that come with the narrow scope.