Effectiveness and efficiency of urban water access in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A panel directional approach

In the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations, countries are committed to achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a paradox as it owns the second-largest basin in the world while more than half of the population has no access to basic drinking water. This fact is our starting point to conduct a performance evaluation exercise of the 11 provinces from 2008 to 2019. Our approach has five distinguished features: we take account of population trends; we use a tailored and complete database of urban centres; we define and decompose flexible indicators, and we use a non-parametric estimation method. Our results show that there is inefficiency and ineffectiveness in urban water access. Overall, larger efficiency–effectiveness differences are over time observed mostly due to a lack of technological change and a resource constraint. We also highlight the role of public policies.