Water Operators' Partnerships (WOPs) are usually presented as relatively simple partnerships between two or more operators. Through capacity development such partnerships then lead to improved performance of a water utility. In this article, we highlight how the context in which WOPs operate is much more complex than this definition suggests. Different actors, operating in different domains, have particular interests in how the water supply sector develops and how WOPs contribute to this development. As a result, in practice, these partnerships often pursue multiple objectives, which represent the interests of different stakeholders. The paper finds that in such settings, achieving these multiple objectives may well surpass the contextual realities and the capacity of the implementing water utilities that form the core of the partnership.

  • Water Operators' Partnership operate in complex institutional environments.

  • Water Operators' Partnerships often pursue multiple objectives, representing interests of different stakeholders.

  • Achieving multiple objectives may well surpass the contextual realities and the capacity of the implementing water utilities.

The definition of Water Operators' Partnerships (WOPs) highlights that these arrangements concern ‘a peer-support exchange between two or more water or sanitation operators’ (UN-Habitat 2018, 1), which aim to improve service provision through capacity development. Following this definition, it appears that the scope of these partnerships and the interests that such WOPs serve are limited to those of the operators and their consumers. With a few notable exceptions, such as Beck (2023) who places WOPs in the context of aid and trade (see also Savelli et al. 2019), most of the literature engaging with WOPs adheres to a similar frame as suggested by the definition of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). Most of the literature tries to establish if the peer-support exchange has produced the envisioned capacity (Stephens et al. 2023), knowledge transfer (Pascual Sanz et al. 2013), and performance improvements (Patron Coppel & Schwartz 2011; Wright-Contreras et al. 2020).

In this paper, we develop a broader focus on WOPs by identifying the different interests that actors have in the development of WOPs. We ask the questions what interests different actors have in setting up such partnerships and what do the different interests mean for WOPs? The argument that the paper advances is that in practice, WOPs pursue multiple objectives, which represent the interests of different stakeholders that operate in diverse domains. The targets that these multiple objectives lead to may well surpass the contextual realities and the capacity of the implementing water utilities that form the core of the partnership. For WOPs to achieve the ambitious objectives of various stakeholders, partner utilities will need to go well outside their comfort zone of operating water infrastructure and more actively engage with actors in domains outside the direct utility partnership.

International development and development actors

A considerable body of literature exists that illustrates how international development comprises much more than just the organizations that aim to improve services or address a particular problem. Mosse (2013, 228) has described international development as entailing ‘social processes that are inevitably transnational, intercultural, and multiscalar and involve the interaction and mediation of extensive actor networks, with different logics and life-worlds’. In focusing on the politics of water, Mollinga (2008) echoes the multiscalar processes of international development by arguing that it is possible to distinguish ‘domains of interaction’ in which water politics takes place. Mollinga distinguishes a global politics domain, an interstate hydro-politics domain, a national politics of policy domain, and an everyday politics domain. It is possible to distinguish these domains ‘because they have different space and time scales, are populated by different configurations of main actors, have different types of issues as their subject matter, involve different modes of contestation and take place within different sets of institutional arrangements’ (Mollinga 2008:12). Although these domains are distinguishable, they are also connected as Mollinga identifies a fifth domain that links two or more domains.

Many WOPs1, as instruments of (international) development for water supply and sanitation, are similarly situated in complex environments as described by Mosse. Using the idea of Mollinga's domains, we show that rather than a ‘simple’ peer-exchange between two or more operators, WOPs are often influenced by multiple domains, characterized by ‘different configurations of main actors’ that each pursue their own interests.

The paper is based on the experiences of Phase I (2017–2021) of the WaterWorX (WWX) programme. We specifically focus on the experiences of three WOPs in Kenya, involving five Kenyan utilities and three Dutch utilities. The WaterWorX programme is elaborated upon in the following section.

The WaterWorX programme

Phase 1 of the WWX programme consisted of 25 WOPs in 18 countries. WWX is co-funded and jointly implemented by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), 10 Dutch supply companies, and 37 water operators in Africa, Asia, and South America.

The WaterWorX programme, which runs over three phases from 2017 to 2030, has the dual objectives of achieving the ‘turnaround’ of water utilities while also increasing sustainable access to drinking water for 10 million people by 2030. The emphasis on providing services to 10 million people is directly linked to the broader goal of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seeks to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 by ensuring expansion of water supply to 30 million people by 2030 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015). Achieving these dual objectives of turning around utility performance and providing water services to an additional 10 million people is to be achieved through2 the following:

(1) Strengthening the financial, technical, and social sustainability of the local partner water companies to make sustainable drinking water available to millions of people in developing and transition countries.

  • (2) Strengthening the enabling environment of laws and regulations, financing, and policies in which water companies are encouraged to function properly and enhance their performance.

  • (3) Increasing access to water infrastructure investment finance, by developing investment proposals and engaging with domestic and international financing organizations and banks.

The objectives of the programme do not really present a significant deviation from traditional WOP projects that focus on capacity strengthening, enhancing performance, and enabling better service. However, the programme is ambitious in the sense that it extrapolates these traditional objectives to a hard target (an additional 10 million people served) and by pursuing a more encompassing performance improvement by striving for a broad utility ‘turnaround’ rather than improvements in particular processes or systems of water supply provision.

The objective of ‘utility turnaround’ scales up a WOP from performance improvement on specific aspects of utility management to the integral and full ‘turnaround’ of the mentee utility. The idea is that once turnaround is achieved, the utility successfully provides ‘sufficient, reliable, convenient, and safe water services’ (Soppe et al. 2018). The position of a utility in the ‘turnaround’ process can be determined by assessing its ‘maturity’. The maturity assessment covers the five areas of Behaviour, Structure/Processes, Capabilities, Tools, and Influence (Kayaga et al. 2013). A total of 30 of the 37 utilities that are part of the WWX programme were studied for their level of maturity. This study concluded that of the 30 utilities investigated, eight were at the lowest, ‘elementary’ maturity level, 13 at the ‘basic’ level, seven at the ‘good’ level, one at the ‘well-performing’ level, and none at the ‘world-class’ level (Mansour & Smits 2020).

The WWX theory of change

As part of the first phase of WWX proposal, a Theory of Change was developed by the consortium partners that consists of five work packages (of which one concerns programme coordination). Excluding the work package on programme coordination, the work packages are people and organization, water, finance, and the enabling environment. The work package of people and organization largely focuses on capacity development of staff and organizational development (processes and procedures) and highlights dimensions such as leadership, planning, and budgeting. The work package ‘water’ largely focuses on infrastructure and operations. The third work package focuses on increasing the level of access to investment finance for the water utilities and to ensure the water utilities become financially sustainable. Considering a unit cost of Eur 25 to 50 per capita to provide a new user (Hutton 2015), the concerned investment for 10 million new users will be in the range of €250–500 Million. The fourth work package is geared towards ensuring that the policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks under which services are to be provided are ‘conducive for sustainable, equitable and transparent drinking water supply’ (WaterWorX 2016, 17).

In using the WWX programme Phase I as a case study, the paper uses data collected for the mid-term review (MTR) and end-of-term review (ETR) as the main source of information. The MTR (Mansour & Smits 2020) is secondary data. During the MTR all WOPs of the WWX programme were visited, and interviews included more than 350 key informants comprising WWX programme coordinators and senior and operational staff of local partner utilities.

The ETR concerns both primary and secondary data as one of the authors was involved in developing the ETR. The ETR consisted of a general review and a field review in six countries. The general review focused on the staff and stakeholders involved in the governance and management of the programme. The review assessed the overall portfolio and performance of the programme by consulting different data sources including WOPs project plans, progress reports, and programme documents.

Data collection for the ETR concerned 24 semi-structured interviews with key informants and one focus group discussion with relevant programme stakeholders at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the concerned embassies, and at the mentor utilities and two partner organizations. In addition, a questionnaire was responded to by 20 mentor utility project managers and mentee utility senior staff. Field reviews in six countries, covering 13 WOPs and including all mentor utilities and 18 mentee utilities, consulted 150 key informants and examined the projects that were implemented under the WWX programme.

The information on the Kenyan WOPs was collected through 31 semi-structured interviews with key informants and one focus group discussion with WWX staff, boards, senior management, and selected staff of the five mentee utilities, as well as other local and national stakeholders and local programme partners. A thematic analysis was undertaken to analyse data collected from the semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, and surveys. The themes identified from these data largely overlap with the themes of the work packages of the WWX programme.

For this paper, we use Mollinga's concept of domains to analyse WOPs for the WWX programme in general and for three WWX cases in Kenya specifically. This paper identifies the five following domains3:

  • (1) Global policy domain: UN and Bretton Woods organizations and member states: these parties have a major role in shaping international development policy and in providing the related development finance. In Kenya, the development partners (DPs) assist the formulation and implementation of national development policy.

  • (2) Kenyan government domain: the national and county governments in Kenya that define and control the enabling environment in which the WOP operates and that set the strategy, objectives, and targets for the water supply sector.

  • (3) Netherlands government domain: the Dutch MFA and its embassies. The MFA co-finances and co-governs the WWX programme and the embassy in Kenya provides assistance to the programme in Kenya.

  • (4) WaterWorX consortium domain: the 10 Dutch water utilities and the Dutch MFA together form the Consortium and govern the WWX programme.

  • (5) Utility partnership domain: Water utilities working together in a WOP (mentee/mentor): the individual mentor utility and the mentee utility in the recipient country jointly implement the programme in the field, through peer-exchange.

Global policy domain

The adoption of SDG 6 by the UN member states has both affected the development aid policies of donor countries as well as WASH policies of the aid recipient countries. The Netherlands committed to assist the provision of new beneficiaries of water (+30 million) and sanitation (+50 million) services (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015) and Kenya developed its Vision 2030 with the aim of achieving universal service coverage (Republic of Kenya 2007).

Kenya depends for 70% of its WASH sector investments on foreign loans and grants. Among those providing investment finance are the African Development Bank, the World Bank, Denmark, France, and Germany. Other countries, like The Netherlands, the USA, and Japan, are providing technical assistance and comparatively limited investment finance. Among Kenya's DPs, the USA has traditionally (1970–2012) been the largest single donor (18% of all aid), followed by a group of multilaterals (20% jointly). Japan, the UK, the EU, and Germany are next in line (7–9% each). The Netherlands is heading a group of bilateral donors with smaller contributions (2–4% each) (World Bank 2014). This picture is also valid for the water sector where the World Bank and the USA are dominant players.

The Development Partner Group provides a forum where the DPs engage among themselves and, as a group, consult with the Ministry of Water, Sanitation, and Irrigation on issues of common interest. Apart from that, all DPs also interact independently with the GoK to negotiate the application of their assistance. The DPs all want ‘value for money’ to meet the expectations of their own constituencies (e.g., the millions of new users committed by the Dutch government) (Van Oppenraaij et al. 2022).

In practice, nearly all DPs focus their assistance on the better performing Kenyan water utilities. The DPs rarely join forces to achieve results. Instead, they ‘compete’ with each other (e.g. by offering below-market financing conditions) to finance the same water utility. This donor competition frustrates commercial, market-based financing initiatives that, at the same time, are acknowledged by the Government of Kenya (GoK) and DPs to be indispensable in bridging the financing gap to achieve the 2030 goals set by the GoK (Van Oppenraaij et al. 2022).

Kenya government domain

The Kenyan constitution was amended in 2011 with a specific aim to devolve power and related resources to the 47 newly created county governments. The Water Act of 2016 vested the ownership of the 88 publicly owned water supply companies in the county governments.

At the national level, there is a host of government departments and agencies that play an important role in regulating, financing, and controlling the water supply sector. These include the Ministry of Finance (National Treasury) and the Ministry of Water, Sanitation, and Irrigation and national-level sector agencies such as the Water Sector Trust Fund (grant financier), Water and Sanitation Regulatory Board (WASREB) (regulator), Water Resources Authority (water permits), and National Environment Management Authority (environmental management). The regional Water Works Development Agencies (WWDAs) are the sole agencies for the development of water sector infrastructure, but after the devolution of power their role is being questioned by the county governments. The WWDAs have been the primary recipient of national and foreign funds for the development of water infrastructure. The water and sanitation infrastructure thus developed was transferred by the WWDAs to the water utilities with the obligation to service the related debt (if any).

Due to the recent changes described above, the enabling environment in Kenya is in flux, uncertain, and not necessarily conducive to a water utility that wants to pursue its own investments. First, while their future role is debated, the WWDAs are still active in developing infrastructure projects. Second, there is no legal clarity that a water utility (owned by its county government) can actually borrow for their capital investments, and if so, whether this debt is to be considered part of the sovereign debt. Third, where infrastructure investments are much below the required level to reach the 2030 goals and need to be accelerated, this is hindered by the fact that the Government of Kenya is struggling to control its foreign debt, meaning that it is very cautious in allowing sovereign lending for capital investment through conventional financiers such as International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and Development Financial Institutions (DFIs).

In addition, since 2014, Kenya is a lower middle-income country meaning that development partner grants and attractively priced loans are decreasing. Due to the large proportion (70%) of foreign funding for water sector investments through sovereign loans and grants, infrastructure financing is a national rather than a local affair. Consequently, the choice of investment projects is at the national level, whereby the all-important foreign financiers play an important role that is dictated by their own development agendas.

At the level of the county government, the Governor and specifically the County Water Minister oversee the water sector and the W&S utilities. The county governments are recent structures and are seeking to execute their function and establish and consolidate their power over the social and economic development and management in their areas of jurisdiction.

County ownership of utilities implies more direct and more influential contacts with senior decision makers at the national level and a better-informed guidance of the county water sector. Also, some county governments have lent or gifted limited funds for investments by the utilities, mostly for water distribution system extensions.

On the negative side, some county governments have dictated the merger of water utilities in their counties, have resisted the implementation of new water tariffs gazetted by regulator WASREB, have taken issue with the existence and role of the regional WWDAs, have tried to unduly influence decision-making by utility managing directors and non-executive boards, as well as appointments of utility board and staff members.

Netherlands government domain

The development cooperation policy of The Netherlands Government is laid out in ‘A world to gain’ (2017) and more recently in ‘Doing what the Netherlands is good at’ (2022). The policy is supported by an annual budget of up to €500 Million. The development cooperation policy of the Netherlands merges aid and trade, which is argued to present a ‘more effective approach for achieving inclusive and sustainable growth’ (Savelli et al. 2019). The explicit aim of promoting interests of the Dutch private sector is also incorporated in this policy (Ploumen 2013). The Netherlands is an important trading partner of Kenya. With a value of US$ 562 million, it ranks second after Uganda (US$ 832M), and before the USA, Pakistan, and the UK with annual export values between US$ 543 and 451 million (WITS 2021).

As mentioned, the Dutch Government's main commitment is to contribute to SDGs 6.1 and 6.2 by providing 30 million people with sustainable access to safe drinking water and 50 million people with sustainable access to improved sanitation by 2030. The financial commitment in support of its WASH policy is €90 million per year for the period 2016–2030.

The Dutch embassy in Nairobi operates under its Kenya Multi-Annual Country Strategy (MACS). The strategy pursues an aid-to-trade policy agenda in which the focus is gradually shifting from traditional development projects to private sector development as a vehicle to attain development goals. At the same time, the policy also has the purpose of developing business opportunities for Dutch private companies in Kenya. The Netherlands government also supports humanitarian and development organizations in their efforts to assist refugees and host communities. In addition, the Netherlands supports a number of public–private partnerships in the area of social progress, human rights, food and nutrition security, and water. The Embassy in Nairobi has one Dutch and one Kenyan sector specialist, both of which work only on a part-time basis on water.

The WaterWorX domain

The implementation and management of the WWX programme are through the Dutch water utilities. At the end of 2020, of the 10 utilities, six worked through VEI Dutch Water Operators (VEI) and four utilities managed their projects independently. VEI managed 17 WOPs with 29 mentee utilities, and the other four mentor utilities managed eight WOPs with eight mentee utilities. VEI hosts and provides the staff of the Programme Coordinating Unit, has an important role in the consortium, and a large presence in its meetings.

During project initiation, the Dutch water utilities agreed how to proportion the programme's resources as the financial support from MFA was to be paired with a proportionate contribution by the Dutch water utility. The funds that a Dutch water utility can spend on international development activities is capped by the legal provision for Dutch water utilities that allows a maximum of 1% of their turnover for development cooperation activities. As such, each water utility had to decide how much it wanted to spend on projects under the WWX programme and how much on development activities outside the WWX programme. In this way, the mentor utilities would determine their own stake in the WWX programme together with their choice for recipient countries and mentee utilities. Generally, most mentor utilities chose to work with partner utilities that they had worked with in the past.

The second key partner in the consortium is MFA. Even though it provides a very significant amount of financial support to WWX (Phase I: €50 + million) and is designated to be the partner for implementing the Enabling Environment work package, neither MFA nor its embassies have made staff available on a fulltime basis to work on the WWX programme. The magnitude of the challenges that would be faced by MFA in its support to WWX were not assessed and analysed in terms of the required inputs. The collective input by MFA and the embassies was admittedly less than intended and insufficient to fulfil the needs of the WWX programme. Finally, the Netherlands embassy in many of the recipient countries is rarely a dominant player in the national water and sanitation development community, or with the national government. This role is often taken up by parties that bring in significant investment finance (such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, and the Danish, French, and German governments, in the case of Kenya).

The utility partnership domain

To convert the WWX programme objectives to the WOPs on the ground, a project plan for Phase I (2017–2021) was prepared for each WOP. The plan was developed by a visiting mission in consultation with the concerned mentee utility. The plan was based on a uniform format that had been developed by WWX. The format required the individual WOP to choose a number of best-fitting activities from a pre-determined longlist (‘menu’) with over 50 activities that served the objectives of the WWX programme. While this approach was logical from the WWX programme management perspective, it may have precluded an individual WOP to define a set of activities that was better suited to address the mentee utility's challenges.

In practice, most WOPs chose a rather pragmatic approach to the development of the project plan. Given that providing quality services is a continuous, day-to-day challenge for the mentee utilities, and that performance improvement is the historic comfort zone of the mentor utilities, most WOPs chose for an ‘initial focus’ on the ‘turnaround’ objective, and more specifically on operational challenges in technical areas. This pragmatic interpretation of the project plan was possible as there was ample ‘low hanging fruit’ that the peer-exchange could reap and which matched the primarily technical orientation of the Dutch project managers and short-term experts. This focus was further enabled because two-thirds of the budget was set aside for this type of activities. As a result, the WOPs have been effective in improving operational performance through knowledge transfer, institutional strengthening, and small investments (Blokland et al. 2021).

The improvement of financial management and investment financing were put on the backburner as especially the first one was seen as a ‘sensitive’ area because it demanded that a good rapport between mentee and mentor be developed first. Moreover, the budget allocations for staff inputs for this work package were comparatively limited, and so was the availability of Dutch short-term financial experts. In addition, the interest to work on investments and investment financing is limited by the challenge that there is no budget in the WWX programme for financing infrastructure investments. Finally, in Kenya, larger investments to benefit the water utilities were mostly prepared and executed by regional government agencies (WWDAs) and only recently (Water Act 2016) are utilities pursuing their own investment projects. This means that the mentee utilities and their staff do not have much experience with the development, financing, and implementation of sizeable investment projects. The mentor utilities do have this experience in their home country. However, they operate in an entirely different and much more favourable context where their high creditworthiness makes it easy to interest lenders in their capital investment projects.

Taking on the ‘ + 10 million’ objective together with the one to achieve ‘turnaround’ provides WWX with a ‘double’ challenge. WWX has taken on a large and yet-to-be-financed ‘service expansion’ objective that is much beyond the scale of a grant-financed pro-poor project serving tens of thousands of new users. At the same time, WWX by taking on a ‘turnaround’ objective, faces a much bigger challenge (‘integral change’) than piloting change in one or several operational areas (‘demonstration’). Together, these objectives propel the WWX programme and its WOPs far beyond the conventional ‘comfort zone’ of more traditional WOPs.

Project plan and initial focus

After developing the project plan to meet the requirements of the WWX programme, most WOPs chose a flexible approach to the implementation of the plan. In most WOPs, this implied a focus on the ‘turnaround’ objective by prioritizing operational challenges in technical areas at the neglect of the objective of extending services to 10 million people. This focus was encouraged by the considerable budget available for these activities, by the ample opportunity for ‘quick wins’, and by the primarily technical orientation of the mentor and mentee utility management and staff in the WOP. The associated knowledge transfer and institutional strengthening combined with limited investments have had a demonstrable result in operational performance (Blokland et al. 2021). The improvement of financial management was put on the backburner as it was seen as a ‘sensitive’ area in the collaboration that demanded a good rapport to be developed first between the Dutch and Kenyan utilities.

Work on the enabling environment and investment financing

The inexperience of both the mentee and mentor to access financing for major investment projects is a major obstacle in a situation where the enabling factors are not conducive. First, most mentee utilities are not ‘mature’ and not or hardly creditworthy, thus limiting the number and type of potential financiers. Second, both mentee and mentor utilities lack the experience of developing and fund sourcing for larger investment projects in a recipient country context, and finally, domestic and foreign financial resources in most recipient countries are not only scarce but also need to be secured in competition with other utilities and other sectors that want to invest.

Mentee and mentor utilities not only face the abovementioned challenges to embark on fund sourcing but have also insufficiently invested in the building of relationships with financiers that would be willing to bring investment funding their way. Given that commercial funding is hardly feasible from the lender's perspective (e.g. the issue of creditworthiness), the only option for most mentee utilities is to access public funding through direct or on-lent government loans and grants. Given the significant size of intended investments and the usually limited budgets at the disposal of local governments, this means that mentee utilities have to turn to their national governments to secure the needed investment funds.

In Kenya, this means that a mentee utility is competing with 87 other water utilities for the scarce funds available from local and international sources. There would be a better chance to win this competition if the collective of the Kenyan WOPs (mentor and mentee utilities), the concerned county governments, and other partners such as the Netherlands embassy would act jointly to convince national policy and decision makers (ministers, senior politicians, and civil servants) and a select group of foreign financiers (multilateral and bilateral DPs with an investment portfolio) that the WOP-supported mentee utilities would be more effective recipients than other utilities. The efforts to influence the national government have not yet got off the ground for several reasons, including the failure of the collective of Kenyan WOPs and counties to join hands, the lack of time and limited access to senior decision makers by the Dutch embassy in efforts to promote a more conducive environment for the WOPs, and the non-aligned interests of other DPs that pursue their own policies and strategies with the Kenyan government.

The WWX objectives are in line with international development policies for WASH that pursue increased access to W&S services and sector reform. The governments of Kenya and The Netherlands have both committed to these policies and have incorporated them in their own policies and strategies for, respectively, W&S sector development and development cooperation. If the WWX programme is successful, it will make a valuable contribution to the achievement of SDG 6 (safely managed WASH services), the commitment to add +30 million users made by The Netherlands government, and in the case of Kenya the drive towards better performing utilities and the achievement of its 2030 targets for W&S service coverage.

Ambitious objectives and limited resources

The scale and scope also provide a huge challenge to the programme, as it takes most of the participating utilities far beyond the comfort zone of conventional WOPS that are about performance improvement by means of demonstration projects and small-scale pre-financed pro-poor investments. The typical WOP experience is mostly an ‘in-house’ activity that does not require the partner utilities to go much beyond the premises of the mentee utility and the local government. A typical WOP does not adequately equip the mentee and mentor utilities with the capability, knowledge, skills, and resources to realize the far-reaching goals of ‘utility turnaround’ and ‘ + 10 million new users’. These goals inevitably require access to high-level national decision makers (for changes to the enabling environment) and to the same authorities and financiers/investors (for infrastructure investment finance). Without this type of access, the WOPs are moved far out of their ‘comfort zone’, into unknown territory with an appreciable risk of failure for the WOP and the WWX programme as a whole.

Enabling environment

The governance structure of the WWX programme does not include representation of the mentee country government(s) and the community of W&S infrastructure financiers. Likewise, at the country level, the governance structure of the WOPs only includes the mentor and mentee utility; it does not include the Netherlands embassy, a local champion for the WWX cause, and the local/international financing community. This means that at the WWX and WOP levels the main stakeholders to promote and decide changes in the enabling environment and to provide investment funding have not been given the opportunity to take ownership of the WWX programme and of the WOPs in the mentee countries.

Consequently, enhancing the enabling environment and gaining access to investment financiers has become very challenging for both the WWX programme and the WOPs. Moreover, given the scarce resources both nationally and internationally, there is fierce competition for national funds and for the funds made available by the DPs. In this competitive environment, the latter may see WWX primarily as an innovative programme that is yet to prove itself, and also as a Dutch initiative that needs to take care of its own infrastructure investment funding, which is not the case. For these reasons, where DPs will likely applaud the WWX/WOPs’ initiative for having objectives that are well-aligned with those of the international community, their active support may not be forthcoming. Instead, they will pursue their own agendas, possibly even at the expense of the WOP in cases where they are competing for recipient country attention and support.

Data cannot be made publicly available; readers should contact the corresponding author for details.

The authors declare there is no conflict.

1

There is a wide variety of WOPs. Some may concern partnerships that are very short and have a singular aim or objective. In this paper, we particularly reflect on WOPs with a longer time-frame and multiple objectives.

2

https://www.waterworxprogramme.com/home. (accessed 27 July, 2023).

3

In identifying these domains we use domains as a heuristic device to show how different groups of actors have different interests and constituents. Some domains may also overlap (meaning that actors may operate in multiple domains).

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