Ghana like most developing countries struggles to improve access to water and sanitation to its urban population. Presently many areas within the country do not have access to portable water from the national grid. And in areas served by the approved utility company, water service is mostly erratic and increasingly unreliable. Available evidence indicates that only 61% of urban residents have access to improved drinking water. Within the urban centers are disadvantaged communities which tend to have much lower water supply coverage. However, since such disadvantaged communities are regarded as part of the urban center, their unique needs are often hidden in the aggregate statistics of the larger urban areas. Thus, policy interventions aimed at improving water supply in the urban centers often have very limited effect on the disadvantaged communities.;This research theorize that the unique characteristics of disadvantaged communities such as high concentration of low income dwellers, squatter communities and poor infrastructure developments, set them apart from the urban centers in which they exist. This research therefore seeks to answer the question, how do you ensure adequate water supply to disadvantaged urban communities in Ghana.;Using the case study methodology, focus group discussion and household surveys, this research explores the unique characteristics of disadvantaged urban communities and how such characteristics can be channeled into finding the right mix of policy interventions to ensure adequate water supply.
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