Water for People Uganda uses unique approaches to provide better water and sanitation facilities to people living in the areas they serve. CATE ZZIWA NIMANYA has served as the organisation’s Country Director for six years. She shares her thoughts with Benon Herbert Oluka on what they have achieved in the districts they serve and what can be done to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target on water and sanitation across all of Uganda’s 127 districts.
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Let’s start by you telling us what Water for People is and the role that Water for People plays in the water sector in Uganda.
Water for People is an international non-profit working in nine countries to bring safe water and sanitation to over four million people. The nine countries are in Asia, India, and three of them are in Africa; that is Malawi, Uganda and Rwanda. The work that we do doesn’t just focus on building wells or installing toilets or putting up pumps but we create a long-term, sustainable change. We work with community members, governments and businesses to find out what they need to feel safe and empowered. Once we have the needs, then we build the capacity from the community to district local governments to change the whole entire system because it is not about that one village or the one hand pump. At the end of the day we look at the whole system of providing water to that community so we want to change the entire system so that they don’t need to come back to us so we have a clear exit strategy even before we start working in any community and what the water and sanitation survey says is it will last for generations. So that’s what we stand for.
Our Everyone Forever district is Kamwenge so we are trying to model that out in Kamwenge but when it comes to sanitation, it is more market-based so we go out where there’s market for the products and approaches that we develop. We develop quite a number of sanitation businesses along the whole faecal sludge management chain, so we come in [the districts of] Kampala, Masaka, Kitgum, Kole, Soroti, trying out different sanitation initiatives. We have a number of them.
So how many districts, in total, do you work in at the moment?
Kamwenge, Kampala, Kitgum, Kole, Apac. Five. But we influence even so many others through our work.
You talked of Kamwenge as your Everyone Forever district, your model district. What’s happening that you’ve been able to achieve and you feel like this is something that the rest of the country can look up to?
In Kamwenge we are trying to make safe water and sanitation services permanent for every household, every healthcare facility and every school. We work on different components there of a system. Like I told you we are trying to build the capacity of the whole system so we look at water resources management because we are saying that this water resource has to last forever so we do look at the resource, the water quality and the water quantity. Then we look at the finances within the system, how much money is coming into the systems, how much are people paying for the water, so finances are a big component of our programme. We help communities determine the type of the tariff they are supposed to pay per jerrycan or per month, working with the service providers. We also look at sanitation at the household level, sanitation in schools, sanitation in healthcare facilities, issues around waste management, issues around prevention of infections using WASH, issues around menstrual hygiene management.
Of course we look at the water management infrastructure. Our biggest support to the Kamwenge district local government is that we pool resources together to construct piped water systems. To-date we’ve constructed over seven large scale systems. We’ve demonstrated that a rural household can actually pay for water, they can have water at their premises, they don’t have to walk, and then we have private operators that actually manage the infrastructure.
Then there are whole issues around institutional strengthening starting from the district water office, we look at the people, the human resource in the district and the resources they have. So institutional strengthening is a very big component where we do lots of trainings, mentoring, coaching the different staff within the district to be able to deliver their work.
Nationally, we are still very low in terms of access to sanitation facilities. Access to water is also quite low. In the area where you have worked, what improvements have happened there and where does it rank at the moment?
Of course when it comes to monitoring our impact, we don’t just count the wells that we’ve built. Most people just count the wells. But in Kamwenge we are talking about a district local government that’s able to plan and prioritise its resources to the un-served areas, so we’ve invested a lot in the human resource capacity building programme and I must say that if you look at where we came from, say, five years ago, where you had a water office where nobody was even motivated, you now have workers that are motivated, know what to do and they are proud to talk about their WASH services.
And then in terms of infrastructure, we’ve invested a lot in piped water systems so really looking at a high level of service for that community where people no longer carry water on their heads. So we are promoting a high level of service, that is the piped water system, and we’ve demonstrated that actually the rural community can pay for water. They pay and they can keep it functioning even without an NGO’s support. They know their tariffs, they know why they are paying, they know the amount and how the money flows.
When we came in, because the monitoring system looks more at the service, the service was about 40. So you can have access but then without a service coming to you, having a borehole 1,000 metres away doesn’t mean that you receive water. It’s too far, it’s too costly. So you try to remove those barriers for water service provision, and that’s what we’ve done; having caretakers that can actually operate and maintain the system very well. Even for the hand pumps we have supported the hand pump mechanics association to be responsive to community demands. If a borehole breaks down they should quickly go and repair it within 24 hours. So we’ve reduced on the downtime when communities wait. And of course when you look at Kamwenge, much as they are not monitoring the service levels, they monitor access. So we have quite a number of model villages and open defecation-free (ODF) villages.
So you have supported Kamwenge and five or six other districts out of the more than 127 districts in the country. Why five? Why not 10? Why not 20? Why not 127?
For us it’s not so much the number. Of course for NGOs it’s always trendy to say we work in 57 districts, but we realised that to create impact and to make a meaningful contribution, you would rather go to a geographical area, do your work well and let others that are in all these others districts also replicate your work. The ministry also realised that they can’t be in over 120 districts so they created these regional structures so we’ve used the regional structures to reach out to even other districts, not necessarily in building so many wells but in terms of capacities built but also putting our tools and approaches out there. I think one of the most successful ones has been the WASH investment plan. How do you plan to use the resources that you have in a way that you can reach out to the un-served? So what we do is we train the TSUs on how to facilitate at district local government, to prioritise their investments in that community. Right now, we talk of over 100 investment plans that have been rolled out in over 100 districts. The fact that you have a go-to document where somebody can say, “yes, these are my un-served population, this is the investment I require and they should be given priority without wasting resources.” And getting districts to start planning for everyone, not planning for village ensuring for Village X, but ensuring every community, every school, for me I think that is much better than getting a presence in a district because you’d have maybe more administration costs.
You have spoken about developing something that could be replicated in other districts and that’s something that’s also in your strategic plan. So, how has it worked so far? Do you have collaborations with other NGOs? Do you collaborate with CBOs? How have you been able to ensure that although you operate in a fewer number of districts that the impact of your work is felt across the country?
Water for People has positioned itself, one, to speak passionately about the SDGs so we have running MoUs with the ministry of water and environment where some of our tools and approaches are being used. We are able to contribute to new policy guidelines and policy changes. We are members of a number of working groups at the national level so our contribution up there can still trickle down to other places. Then I’ve already talked about the investment plans that are now being implemented all over Uganda.
But then we also have other like-minded organisations like IRC [International Rescue Committee], WaterAid. We have what we call Agenda for Change. We are on an agenda to reach everyone in Uganda so in there we promote the tools and approaches we use, the ones we’ve developed over time. If you remember, WaterAid has been developing the district-wide approach to planning, Water for People [is implementing] Everyone Forever, and IRC implemented a big project on Triple-S. So we put our minds together and sell to the sector colleagues, so we are able to influence the way people do programming in this country. And for me I think we can be able to influence so many others.
On the issue of collaboration, you’re a member of the Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (UWASNET) and that would suggest that there’s some coordination going on at a certain level. And yet when you speak to people in government, they say they are handicapped by the limited reach they have across the country and failure to coordinate so that services reach more people. Is there something about the coordination that hasn’t clicked yet or is there something you’d want to see other NGOs get involved in to ensure that you make more progress than has been achieved so far?
I think what we need to all realise as a country is that we shall not achieve the SDG targets if we continue working in our silos. We need to work together. Water for People can’t have the money to reach everyone in Uganda. Just like government says, it’s still handicapped. So we need to really work together, and we’ve invested a lot in demonstrating that at the district level where now we have different departments working together; you find natural resources, forestry and water [all collaborating]. We need to talk about water resources management as a country if we are [to achieve our desired goals]. We need to work with the private sector, with the banks, etc.; that’s what Water for People is trying to demonstrate at the district level and we hope that the same can move to other districts.
We are also trying to use the UWASNET NGO platform to influence even NGOs working in the Rwenzori region. Once we influence them then another region can be influenced so learning and knowledge management is at the heart of our programme. We share freely what we do but we try to be present in those working groups. It’s a challenge because organisations have to realise that that not working together won’t enable Uganda to reach the SDGs so we really need new leadership, new thinking, and new energy in the sector to be able to achieve that.
And so far how do you work? Apart from the online networks, is there a joint strategy that is there for all organisations? Would you want to see that happen?
Yeah, I think we can still pronounce ourselves on a strategy that can lead us to achieve the SDGs but I imagine government should take the lead. Government or even UWASNET has the opportunity to take the lead on that, saying that, you know, all NGOs we’ve decided to prioritise untapped areas. We’ve decided to go to for technologies that are easily sustainable. We’ve decided to do ABC. I think that would be a good thing on the NGO side but also government. And government has pronounced itself on the sector strategic plan. The strategic plan looks at the current financing in the sector, we need to increase the financing six times [for the structure strategic plan] if we are to reach the SDG six [on clean water and sanitation], but how do we get all those resources? We still have to work together. We need to bring all the other players on board. We need to look at other cross-cutting initiatives like climate change, gender, governance issues. There’s a lot that we need to do.
But for us we have a plan in Kamwenge, a district investment plan, that we use, that brings all those ideas and vision together for the Kamwenge team. 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.
So one of the key requirements, as far as you see, is more funding from other partners. Are you getting some of that funding locally or is it only coming from foreign donors?
Most of our funding comes from foundations and other charities. Just like government is also chipping in. Just last week the government made a commitment to actually start funding up to 25 per cent of our work. But the community also contributes, so we don’t finance all of our programmes 100 per cent. We depend on co-funding from the government, the community and others.
You’ve talked of the community contributing some kind of support or, specifically in some cases, funding. How easy has it been for you to involve locals in formulating, planning and executing your projects? And do these plans come from your parent organisation or is it something you develop locally with the input of the community you go out to support?
For Kamwenge, we have a vision of reaching everyone. So the first thing we did was to come up with a vision; where do we want to go? Who are the un-served people in this district? Do we have capacity gaps? So it was a whole needs assessment. We collected lots of data that we used now to inform our planning, so all projects that we develop, even for the other partners, have a go-to document that they use to develop new projects so that we achieve the vision for Kamwenge. And the communities know of their contribution, and even after contribution to carpets, what happens after the system is in place? We determine the cost of operating and maintaining a system and we come up with tariffs that they pay. I told you that we’ve demonstrated that rural people can actually pay for their own water. Take water to their door-step, they will definitely pay for it.
Now, what have you found to be the biggest challenges to getting people to embrace the ideas, the initiatives that you’ve taken to them?
Of course varying approaches by different implementing partners and always because somebody will sit behind their desk and say this community can’t pay [for the maintenance of the water facility]. Why are you making them pay? And then of course when it breaks down, nobody is even there to repair it. And of course the whole issue around the environment. We have so many encroachers and once you have very many encroachers, they affect your water quantity. And we also have poor water quality in Kamwenge due to shallow wells getting contaminated.
Finally, are there any final insights that you want to share about the water, sanitation and hygiene sector that you may want to share with the public but I have not asked about directly?
Financing for the sector is still a challenge. We are seeing reduced financing to the local government and I think it’s time to look at other options for financing. The community paying tariffs is one of the ways and the sector needs how we can quantify that and use the tariffs to bring in more resources to the sector so that they can keep paying back either loans or [securing more funding].
