Despite significant recent investment, levels of access to clean drinking water in Tanzania remain similar to those of 20 years ago. Why is it that although money has been flowing, water continues to trickle

Carlitz, Ruth

Taylor, Ben

LSE Research Online

22/06/2017 The challenge of water provision in rural Tanzania - IGChttp://www.theigc.org/blog/the-challenge-of-water-provision-in-rural-tanzania/ 1/3Authors Ruth CarlitzPhD CandidateUniversity of California -Los Angeles Ben TaylorOpen DevelopmentConsultantTwawezaPublished on: 7 Oct 2014Countries: TanzaniaResearch themes: Inclusive Growth The challenge of water provisionin rural TanzaniaDespite significant recent investment, levels of access to cleandrinking water in Tanzania remain similar to those of 20 yearsago. Why is it that although money has been flowing, watercontinues to trickle?The Tanzanian NGO Twaweza recently released a researchbrief detailing the ongoing challenge of access to clean water inthe country. The brief showed that just over half of allTanzanians (54%) obtain their drinking water from an‘improved’ source; the figure for rural citizens is even lower atjust 42%. These findings become even more striking when putin the context of recent investments. As shown in the figurebelow, Tanzania’s current level of access is similar to that of 20years ago, despite a lot of money having been spent.Sources of data: Tanzania Public Expenditure Review (PER) ofthe Water Sector, 2009; Tanzania PER 2010; 2013 OverseasDevelopment Institute Rapid Budget Analysis of the WaterSector in Tanzania; National Accounts of Tanzania Mainland2011; World Bank World Development Indicators; WorldBank/IMF Consumer Price changes data.So why is it that although money has been flowing, watercontinues to trickle? There are several reasons. The first has todo with priorities. Prior to the Water Sector DevelopmentProgramme (WSDP) – a sector-wide approach launched in 2006– the vast majority of investments in the water sector weredirected to urban areas (where only one quarter of allTanzanians reside).Furthermore, a recent WSDP evaluation carried out by OxfordPolicy Management (OPM) suggests that while more money isbeing directed toward rural water supply, it is not being spent22/06/2017 The challenge of water provision in rural Tanzania - IGChttp://www.theigc.org/blog/the-challenge-of-water-provision-in-rural-tanzania/ 2/3being directed toward rural water supply, it is not being spentefficiently. The OPM evaluation found the average cost perrural water point beneficiary to be roughly 59USD –substantially higher than the planned cost of 36USD, as well asconsiderably higher than DFID’s cost per capita for rural waterprogrammes in the region, which range from 22USD to 36USD.The OPM report does not try to account for what seems to bedriving the apparent lack of value for money. In this blog wedraw from our recent work in Tanzania to suggest someanswers.The WSDP to date has been characterised by closer observers ofthe water sector as highly flawed. The biggest single problemappears to be implementation of the “10-village schemes”,through which local government authorities were supposed toselect the 10 neediest villages within their jurisdiction to receivenew, WSDP-funded projects. Design and construction of theprojects was contracted out to private consultants who were tovisit the villages selected and consult with community membersin order to come up with suitable designs. Through acombination of poor coordination and procurementbottlenecks, the design process proved to be extremely time-consuming and expensive. But the main driver of cost inflationwas the designs chosen: communities chose (or were encouragedto choose) much costlier technologies than anticipated. It was inthe consultants’ interest to design more expensive projects,which would ultimately increase their cut of the funding. As aresult, in most districts only two or three WSDP projects havebeen implemented to date, out of the 10 originally planned.Beyond the problems with the design stage, one of the keyculprits for weak implementation of WSDP to date is thought tobe the widespread lack of accountability or performancemanagement that characterises the water sector. One long-serving consultant to the water sector (who has since left afteryears of frustration) described his experience trying to build afinancial management system for the WSDP. The exerciseproved to be nearly impossible, as no one in the Ministry hadever compiled a list of contracts signed, recorded how muchwas spent against each one, and how that reflected the budget.Compiling this information took four months and, despitebeing incomplete, revealed a “staggering amount of wastage.”Similarly, there is very little monitoring of funds from thecentral government down to the district level. The lack ofmonitoring relates to a challenge of coordination of the over300 government agencies involved in implementing the WSDP.In particular, there is a lack of clarity regarding theresponsibilities of the Prime Minister’s Office – RuralAdministration and Local Government (PMO-RALG), whichhas traditionally been the main oversight body governingdistrict authorities, and the Ministry of Water (MoW), whichleads the WSDP and sends WSDP funds down to the districtlevel.A lack of information is not the main culprit, however. As oneWorld Bank employee noted, “the Ministry knows everythingthat goes wrong, but that doesn’t lead to action. They needsomething more than just information.”22/06/2017 The challenge of water provision in rural Tanzania - IGChttp://www.theigc.org/blog/the-challenge-of-water-provision-in-rural-tanzania/ 3/3The question then becomes: what would lead to action? Thereis a clear need for better incentives – for both the Governmentof Tanzania (GoT) and donors who fund the water sector – toensure that money spent in the water sector is not wasted. Tworecent initiatives on the horizon offer some hope.First, the government has included rural water provision amongthe six priority sectors that are part of Big Results Now (BRN).BRN was launched with great fanfare in February 2013 andrepresents an attempt to duplicate a similar developmentinitiative from Malaysia. After selecting six priority sectors theGoT convened intense eight-week, heavily focused problem-solving ‘labs,’ which were to produce concrete action plans withclear milestones and targets. The goals and targets that emergedfrom the lab for the water sector are very ambitious: Accordingto the Minister for Water, the three-year initiative would resultin access for more than 15.4 million people living in rural areas,raising the percentage of people with access to clean water to 75percent by 2015.Despite being seen as politically motivated (BRN targets alignneatly with the 2015 election), many working in the watersector see BRN as bringing much-needed momentum andattention the long neglected rural water sector. Mostimportantly for this discussion, BRN includes performancemanagement as a key ‘enabler’ for delivering results. While thedetails of the performance management enabler are still sketchy,some proposals have included a ranking system for localgovernments that will publicise officials’ achievement (or failureto achieve) targets, and then be used as a key criteria indetermining the budget allocation to local governments. BRNalso includes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that higher-level officials are supposed to achieve within specifictimeframes.Of course, if the government is left to monitor itself, theproblem of poor incentives still looms. This is where the secondrecent initiative comes in.Late last year, the Ministry of Water released acomprehensive water point mapping database, with informationon all 74,289 public improved ‘water points’ (communalstandpipes, hand pumps, improved springs, dams and cattletroughs) serving rural communities in mainland Tanzania.  Therelease of the WPM data has already forced the Ministry toconcede that coverage in rural areas was much lower than theyhad been saying (34% rather than 64%).If the water point mapping data is used to see if the BRNtargets are achieved, and well-publicised to people who canmake a difference (the donors who fund the water sector andthe citizens whose votes ruling party politicians rely on),perhaps there is more than a trickle of hope for things toimprove in Tanzania’s water sector.

The challenge of water provision in rural Tanzania

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