In Nigeria, more than 60 million people are required to meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target for improved water by 2015 and is unlikely to be achieved only by public supply. To cover these water availability gaps water vendors exist and ignoring their role is potentially deceptive. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of water vendors in meeting these peoples’ need and elicit household’s willingness-to-pay for improved supply. The research includes cross-sectional mixed method in which questionnaire survey was performed to 218 households; and interviews and focus group discussion were conducted with water vendors. Findings reveal that water vendors supplied most households irrespective of season. Retail vendors buy 25 l at ₦4.00 ($0.013) from wholesale vendors and resale at ₦20.08 ($0.07) during dry and at ₦14.02 ($0.05) in wet season. The price is 28 and 40 times the cost of in-house connection from Kano State Water Board (KNSWB) during rainy and dry season, respectively. Vendors who buy from hand-dug wells pay ₦100.00 ($0.33) per day and draw as much water within that day. Furthermore, willingness-to-pay for in-house connection was elicited as ₦367.00 ($1.20), lower than monthly flat fixed tariff set by KNSWB. The study recommends recognizing vendors formally in form of public private partnership so that technical and financial support be given, thus their activities and charges be regulated. People’s perception on water should be changed through education and enlightening. Further research should focus on estimating total volume of water supplied by water vendors.

Improving the performance of water use systems (WUSs) is essential for addressing the pressure on water resources for sustainability. Despite the potential impacts of population growth and global warming especially in semi-arid regions, the knowledge and understanding of WUSs and impacts of those main drivers of change on their performance are not available in the Kano River basin (KRB). This paper assesses these impacts on the performance of KRB, using the new and innovative Sefficiency (sustainable efficiency) framework, which incorporates quantity, quality, and beneficial aspects of water use in a comprehensive and systemic manner. We found that performance of the WUSs is sensitive to population growth and global warming under the scenarios considered. Kano River is relatively less sensitive to global warming impacts, while high population growth is dominant. Moreover, their combined effect will result in a reduction of downstream water by 70% and potential demands will far exceed the available supply by 2050. It is recommended that efficient management of water regarding the qualitative as well as quantitative aspects is very critical in KRB. This study can be regarded as the first step, and future studies may adopt the described methodology and can benefit from smart technologies, e.g., sensors and remote sensing.

Addressing water use efficiency in the Middle East is challenging due to the geopolitical complexity, climatic conditions and a variety of managerial issues. Groundwater is the dominant water resource for Palestinians, while aquifers are shared with their neighbours. We assessed in this study the efficiency of the agricultural water use in Jericho, which we defined as the Water Use System (WUS), and its impact on the main source, the Eastern Aquifer Basin (EAB), using the Sustainable Efficiency (Sefficiency) method. The assessment considered the objectives’ difference between the farmers in the region and the water managers. As Sefficiency requires, the analysis also considered in addition to the quantities of the different water path types within our WUS, their quality and beneficial weights. The results highlighted efficiency improvement potentials, a substantial number of unreported abstractions and an impact of the use of chemical substances on the main source. In addition, through hypothesizing four scenarios, we demonstrated that: 1. Improving the quality of returns has a great positive impact. 2. Increasing water abstractions is not beneficial if it is not linked to an increase in yield production. 3. Precipitation rates can influence water use efficiency. 4. More careful treatment of the unwanted plants and a selection of high socio-economic value crops would enhance Sefficiency.