Access to drinking water in Togo’s semi-urban areas remains inadequate due to the mismatch between community management models and the technical and financial challenges of drinking water supply systems. Drawing on the analytical framework of polycentric governance, this article examines the extent to which the model of water service delegation, in the form of leasing, constitutes a viable and sustainable alternative in the towns of Kovié and Noépé in Togo. The research adopts a comparative case study design using mixed methods, combining a quantitative survey (n = 712) with qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 14) and focus groups (n = 5). The results reveal near-unanimous dissatisfaction with community-based management (96.9% in Kovié, 97.7% in Noépé) and widespread distrust of its ability to ensure sustainable access to water (more than 84% in both localities). The results reveal that the leasehold experiment was associated with operational improvements in Kovié, with an operator-reported collection rate of 85% - 90% and a 4-km expansion of the network. A counterintuitive finding highlights that households furthest from the network consume more (Spearman’s rho = 0.307; p < 0.001) in a bivariate analysis, later tested against source combinations and household characteristics, revealing a diversity of service patterns. However, the model’s sustainability remains fragile: low technical capacity of the delegating municipalities, structural fragility of small private operators, insufficient regulation, and dependence on external support. From a theoretical perspective, these results qualify the promises of polycentric governance applied to contexts of fragile decentralization, showing that the multiplicity of control centers does not automatically compensate for the asymmetry of institutional capacities.
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