"the graveyard of development projects"

 This blog will explore the history of the movement of Water, Sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services globally and focus on the input of community management approaches in rural areas.

Decentralisation, the neoliberal framework to reduce the involvement of the state alongside the failures of under-resourced governments to deliver services to rural communities led to community management being adopted as the prevalent model for management of rural water and sanitation supplies in sub- Saharan Africa in the 1980's (Parry-Jones et al., 2001). In a year of disliking Amazon, shopping locally, community management working from the ""bottom- up seems perfect?! However, Africa has been referred to as "the graveyard of development projects" an attempt to meet development goals, institutions effectively implanted a one size fits all approach which this blog will show isn't effective  (Cadribo 1994:22 in Doe and Khan 2004).

Figure 1, ministries of health discussing community development in 1980, Uganda. Source: Amref Health Africa

The process:

The initial stage is already a complex one. In order to begin, a dialogue must be established between the community whereby they participate in planning and implementing a water supply project. However, what constitutes the 'community' such as village, ethnicity or family may be altered by the external party who define the community as 'water supply community,' (Harvey and Reed 2007). The external institution immediately impacts who gains and who is left out of the intended development.  

Figure 2, FundiFix working in Kenya. Source: Trends 2018

Secondly, the community are expected to contribute to the initial system installation costs and meet all ongoing maintenance and repair costs through regular payments in an attempt to prompt responsibility (Harvey and Reed 2007).  However, paying for something does not intrinsically cause responsibility. Furthermore, this decreases the cost for the external party,  showing a strikingly visible incentive. 

The community are left with the problem of sustainability of the WASH project- the managerial, operation and maintenance which writers such as Doe and Khan (2004) and Foster (2013) have discussed is problematic; sustainability requires encouragement, motivation and technical assistance to pull off such a big task. Similarly, we wouldn't expect wealthier countries rural communities to pay to maintain their water pipes, so why do we expect this to automatically work in less affluent countries?(Chowns 2015). 

The result:

If we consider access to WASH as a form of "progress", statistics such as this are worrying.  According to UNICEF, in 2012, there were 35 million more sub-Saharan Africans without drinking water than in 1990,  although, we should note the population has almost doubled in that time. The significant non-functionality of community-based management has not met expectations and suggests the paradigm should be reconsidered (Harvey and Reed 2007). 

Figure 3, geographical inequalities in use of WASH across Africa. Source Pullan et al., 2014

Communities are not necessarily given a chance to opt out which reflects Eurocentric colonial trends where external authorities attempt to influence "development in Africa". Simply giving the community a "voice" does not necessarily happen and is not enough (van der Velden 2006). Next week will explore this in more detail. 

Summary

Overall, despite the last 40 years, sustainable community management of rural water supplies remains an elusive goal for sub-Saharan Africa. With the population increase, the climate factors discussed last week and management strategies such as this failing to engage the community, human and physical factors significantly limit the sustainability of WASH.