By BENON HERBERT OLUKA
Civil society organisations operating in Uganda invested at least Shs91 billion in the water and sanitation sub-sector during the 2017/18 financial year, according to the Water and Environment Ministry’s annual Sector Performance Report for 2018.
That figure is likely to be higher given that the collated total of invested funds is based on submission by only 82 civil society organisations (CSOs), yet the Uganda Water and Sanitation Network (UWASNET) alone has an estimated active membership of 150 CSOs. There are also several other CSOs that are operational in Uganda but are not members of UWASNET.
According to the ministry’s figures, the contribution by CSOs into the water and sanitation sub-sector is close to the total amount that the government injected into rural communities to serve 531,938 people with new improved water supplies in the 2017/18 financial year.
In total, the water and environment ministry invested a total of Shs131 bn for the new improved water supply during the period under review. That translates to an overall per capital cost for rural water supplies of Shs246,663 – a figure that nearly doubles the Shs114,295 that the ministry spent on rural water supplies per person the financial year before.
The efforts by the NGOs supplemented the investment into the sub-sector by the government, which the minister for water and environment, Sam Cheptoris, says is not sufficient to enable Uganda achieve the national development targets as set out in the second National Development Plan (NDP-II) that runs from 2015/16 to 2019/20.
“Sector financing still remains one of the major challenges to achievement of national development targets under the NDP-II,” says the minister in a statement introducing the 2018 Sector Performance Report.
According to Cheptoris, his ministry has developed a long-term sector strategic investment plan “which clearly indicates that the sector requires at least nine times the present annual level of funding over the next 12 years if we are to achieve the water and environment related national targets under the Vision 2040 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
In the 2017/18 financial year, the government allocated Shs1.7 trillion to the water and environment ministry as well all the agencies that affiliated to it. These include the National Environment Management Agency (NEMA), National Forestry Authority (NFA), Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA) and National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC).
Out of that total, donors provided Shs320 billion (or 18.5 per cent of the total budget); while an additional Shs101 billion came from CSOs both in the water and environment sub-sectors.
However, according to Cheptoris, because the money is not sufficient, the government is re-thinking the ways in which it not only marshals its finances, but also how the ministry spends it.
“Additional resource mobilisation, coupled with efficient use of available resources, is therefore one of the key sector priorities which is being pursued,” says the minister.
NGO INPUT AT A GLANCE
During the 2017/18 financial year, CSOs increased their investment in all the five key thematic areas that NGOs generally focus on. These are water supply, sanitation, community management, water for production and integrated water resources management (IWRM).
For water supply infrastructure, the investment shoot up from Shs21.03 bn in 2016/17 to Shs31.16 bn in 2017/18, while for sanitation, it climbed from Shs11.60 bn in 2016/17 to 12.53 bn in 2017/18. Community management saw its budget rise slightly from 3.92 bn a year earlier to 3.99 bn in 2017/18, water production’s budget grew in 12 months from Shs 0.29 bn to Shs1.15 bn, while that of IWRM increased from Shs1.55 bn to Shs2.87 bn in 2017/18.
According to the ministry of water and environment, the statistics above show that non-state actors are committed to contributing towards helping Uganda achieve its SDG 6.1 target through their investments.
“The investment trend over the last 5 years indicates a general increase across the period, despite a decline in FY2016/17. This reporting period in particular has seen a 48 per cent increase in investment from the last year,” says the government’s 264-page report.
Out of the money allocated to the construction of water supply infrastructure, the report says that 82 per cent of the funds were spent on boreholes and piped water systems, with 59 per cent of total water infrastructure investments spent on construction of the water systems and 23 per cent on rehabilitation/ repair.
“This investment level reflects [the] CSO’ focus and continued commitment towards improved levels of service for water supply and thus realization of the SDG 6.1 targets,” says the report.
When broken down, the figures show that the investment by the CSOs financed the construction of 1,603 new water supply facilities and rehabilitation of 1,584 existing ones. Further, the infrastructure investments mainly targeted household level, with only 11 per cent of facilities invested intended for institutions.
The report also deduces that according to the type of infrastructure provided by CSOs, there is a clear indication that their investments largely target the country’s under-served rural areas.
“The technology profile shows that 92 per cent of the new facilities provided have a rural focus, including point water sources (boreholes, shallow wells and springs), roof top rain water harvesting (RWH) systems and gravity flow schemes (GFS)” says the report. “There was also significant CSO investment in piped water systems, during the year, a total of 34 new piped systems were financed and rehabilitation undertaken on 35.”
In a bid to increase functionality levels, according to the report, CSOs also invested in rehabilitating over 1,500 point sources of which 78 per cent were boreholes, the latter at an average unit cost of about UGX 1 million. It adds however that the high numbers also draw attention to the reduced functionality and thus sustainability of the facilities which are often left under community management.
“The approach to sustainability of these point water sources will require contextualized solutions and a paradigm shift if communities are to continue to adopt these technologies, especially in the short term while they remain the most feasible level of service for safe water supply to rural communities,” says the report.
The majority of the CSO borehole rehabilitation works, according to the ministry, were undertaken in the Lango and Acholi, West Nile and Busoga regions, with intervention areas largely within the districts last reported with low functionality.
On Sanitation, the investment by CSOs was an even split between basic and safely managed sanitation. “The current investment level represents an eight per cent increase from the last reporting year (2016/17),” explains the report. “It is the highest over the last five years, but still within a stable range from Shs11.4 bn to Shs12.5 bn.”
NEED FOR MORE FUNDS
In spite of the progress that the non-state actors have made in terms of their investment into the water and sanitation sub-sector, both government officials and their counterparts at the NGOs agree that there is need for more funding in order to enable both parties achieve the set targets.
Echoing the message that the water minister stated in his introduction to the Sector Performance Report 2018, the sanitation coordinator at the ministry of water and environment, Martha Naigaga, told the WASH Journal in an interview that the government is not providing all the money that’s needed because of other competing demands.
However, Naigaga said the finance ministry had at least allocated money that is now remitted regularly to districts even if it is not “where we want to be”. She said at least each district is receiving Shs2 bn per year as part of the decentralisation system to address water and sanitation issues.
“The ministry may not provide all the money at once because it is not possible. There are competing needs in this country so they are not looking only at sanitation,” she said. “[However], some years back we did not have a budget line for sanitation in the ministry of finance…. Right now we have a budget line for sanitation; right now we have money….”
The Country Director of Water for People, Cate Zziwa Nimanya, said in a separate interview that in order to achieve the investment plans that her organisation has made for Kamwenge, which is their model district, they need a threefold increment in funding.
“For Kamwenge alone, if you look at the investment plan we have to increase the funding almost three times the current investments in the district to be able to reach the targets. So we have an investment plan taskforce that goes out to sell the vision of Kamwenge but to also mobilise resources from other partners,” she explained.
To Nimanya, the situation in Kamwenge is just a microcosm of the situation that NGOs finds themselves in at the moment. She says NGOs need to increase their own budgets by up to six times in order to achieve their targets in the national water and sanitation strategic plan.
“We still have to work together. We need to bring all the other players on board,” she said. “We need to look at other cross-cutting initiatives like climate change, gender, governance issues.”
For the government, according to its report, there is need for better coordination among NGOs if they are to become more effective. The Sector Performance Report 2018 says the latest reporting trends indicate that fewer CSOs reporting to UWASNET, for reasons yet to be established. Furthermore, trends over the last three years indicate a decline in the proportion and number of Local NGOs and Faith Based Organizations (FBO), with more international NGOs (INGOs) reporting.
“To improve CSO sector performance reporting, UWASNET intends to undertake a physical audit to confirm actual active members and to establish causes of low reporting performance” reveals the report, adding; “Then, appropriate remedial measures in addition to the planned measures, like increasing reporting frequency to bi-annually and introduction of online reporting, will be implemented,” concludes the report.”
