Safe Water Security in Kumi District



Contract partner: Whave Solutions Limited Country: Uganda Funding amount: € 200.000,00 Project start: 01.12.2015 End: 30.11.2017

Short Description:

Overall goal


The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the alleviation of rural poverty and water-borne disease, in line with the Ugandan government’s policies and strategies in the water sector.


Expected results


The project will demonstrate a public-private partnership (PPP) structure for Kumi District piloted in one sub-county, to cost-effectively implement the Community-Based Maintenance System (CBMS). The main aim will be to achieve the government target of improving functionality rates to over 95% in a manner affordable to local communities.


Target group / Beneficiaries


The target group is the rural population of Kumi District. The project will engage 48 communities, and the number of direct beneficiaries from the project will be 14,400. The beneficiaries are the members of rural communities, including all ages and genders. Women in particular will benefit from capacity building and trainings to promote them in leadership and administrative roles in local committees (WSCs).


Activities


The project will introduce performance-payment of local hand-pump mechanics contracted to a rural service utility, which will be prototyped by Whave. The service utility will monitor daily operational reliability as a basis for performance payment. The project will nurture community willingness-to-pay for service agreements by supporting and training community committees and by facilitating saving of by-law fees, for example by facilitating mobile money banking. Gender equality and female empowerment will be promoted, with women supported to adopt key leadership and administrative roles. The issue of home contamination of water is recognized as equally critical as reliability of clean water supply. The issue is addressed through monitoring of community hygiene and home water quality testing, because experience has shown this has the effect of driving improvement and preventing the relapse which commonly follows hygiene lift campaigns. Continuous training will be provided to the HPMs and the Kumi Hand Pump Mechanic Association (HPMA), and all data will be continuously shared with the District Local Government (DLG), Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) and HPMA. In the second year, the PPP structure will be shaped co-operatively by stakeholders according to information gathered in the course of the project, specifically to optimise cost-effectiveness and sustainability.


Context


The population of Kumi District is one of the youngest in the country, with 56% under the age of 18. Socio-economic data for Kumi compared to data for Uganda demonstrate that poverty is a serious issue in Kumi. Identified problems that are being addressed by the project are:

- Poor functionality rates due to lack of financial incentive for preventive maintenance.

- Vulnerability of the poor and of women.

- Lack of detailed information at individual community level relevant to steering strategies and achievements in functionality, safe water chain and water quality.

- The reluctance and failure of many community members to pay their by-law fees is a major reason for poor water source and WSC functionality.

- The high cost of maintenance threatening affordability and sustainability.

- Clean water from a shared source is frequently contaminated during transport and storage, invalidating investments in clean water supply and reliability of supply.

The intervention is fully integrated with government policy on rural water and sanitation, and enhances implementation of policy through partnership and continuous co-ordination at district level, at ministry level, and through co-ordination with the Technical Support Unit (TSU) of the Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE).

project number 2744-00/2015
source of funding OEZA
sector Wasserversorgung und sanitäre Einrichtungen
tied
modality Project-type interventions
marker Environment: 1, Gender: 1, Democracy: 1, Poverty: 1
  • Policy marker: are used to identify, assess and facilitate the monitoring of activities in support of policy objectives concerning gender equality, aid to environment, participatory development/good governance, trade development and reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health. Activities targeting the objectives of the Rio Conventions include the identification of biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, and desertification.
    • 1= policy is a significant objective of the activity
    • 2= policy is the principal objective of the activity
  • Donor/ source of funding: The ADA is not only implementing projects and programmes of the Austrian Development Cooperation , but also projects funded from other sources and donors such as
    • AKF - Foreign Disaster Fund of the Austrian federal government
    • BMLFUW - Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water
    • EU - Funds of the European Commission
    • Others - various other donors are listed in ADA’s annual business report.
  • Type of Aid – Aid modalities: classifies transfers from the donor to the first recipient of funds such as budget support, core contributions and pooled programmes and funds to CSOs and multilateral organisations, project-type interventions, experts and other technical assistance, scholarships and student costs in donor countries, debt relief, administrative costs and other in-donor expenditures.
  • Purpose/ sector code: classifies the specific area of the recipient’s economic or social structure, funded by a bilateral contribution.
  • Tied/Untied: Untied aid is defined as loans and grants whose proceeds are fully and freely available to finance procurement from all OECD countries and substantially all developing countries. Transactions are considered tied unless the donor has, at the time of the aid offer, clearly specified a range of countries eligible for procurement which meets the tests for “untied” aid.
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