One in three handpumps not working!

An example of a mechanism used in community management strategies is the hand pump which emerged in the 1980's; the decade of Village Level Operation and Maintenance (VLOM), mentioned last week. Handpumps allow access to boreholes and therefore seem very useful for rural communities. Furthermore, the aim was they could be fixed with only one tool and were easy to install and repair (Morgan 1993). However, the sustainability of hand pumps has been severely critiqued since one in three are thought to not be working at any one time (Foster 2013). Therefore, I felt very inclined to investigate.

Research by Foster et al.,  (2018) has shown hand pumps act as an easy and cheap way to achieve a policy goal. It is therefore no surprise that there are the most widely-used technology for rural water supply in Africa and that 60,000 are installed each year (Parry- Jones et al., 2001). 

Figure 1, a diagram of a handpump. Source Mechanical Engineering 2016

However, cost efficiency doesn't necessarily mean productivity. The sustainability of the hand pump is an extensive discourse showing a a paradigm shift from project installation to long-term service delivery by policy makers, implementers and investors (Harvey and Reed 2007). For example, starting with the designers who are keen to sell their products, often before they are actually tested under VLOM conditions (Morgan 1993). Secondly, when asked to demonstrate how easy it was to fix a hand pump with one tool, a Europe salesman failed to do so (Morgan 1993). 

Sustainability of the handpump:

A comparison of ten case studies from eight African countries by Parry-Jones et al., (2001) found seven critical issues undermining the sustainability of a hand pump, for example; inadequate training and ongoing support for the community and a lack of user involvement in choice of technology. Furthermore, research has shown there is no direct relationship between ownership leading to the willingness to manage the hand pump, for example in Zambia, out of 60 communities, 82% expressed a strong sense of ownership, however the operational failure rate was no different than communities that didn't express a sense of ownership (Harvey and Reed 2006). Therefore, responsibility is not linked with sustainability. 

When searching media sources for hand pump efficiency, I found very little. I wonder why? Well, it doesn't look great when so many organisations have set up hand pumps. This first three and half minutes of the video summarises this. The rest of the video shows the paradigm shift to aiming for sustainability. 

Figure 2, source Pulitzer Centre

Measuring and assessing sustainability of hand pumps vary across reports, however, WaterAid attempted to develop a simple tool to access the sustainability of projects called the Sustainability Snapshot. This can be applied to other water infrastructure or to evaluate a community's ability to manage future installations which prompts the installers to reflect on the maintenance funds and skills in a community before they leave (Parry-Jones et al., 2001). For example, WaterAid who intervened in Uganda in 2004 used the snapshot to review hand pump service delivery to identify if national water and sanitation objectives were being achieved on the ground in Uganda. It found key problems in the equity and sustainability of rural water sanitation service delivery and was used to sharpen planning decisions and focus monitoring and evaluation. 

Summary

Overall, the hand pump acts as a cheap and cheerful solution for aid agencies to identify as creating water sources, without putting enough effort in to ensure sustainability. Therefore, methods such as the snapshot might be essential to determine the most effective approach. This correlates to community management where more time spent understanding the context of the area is necessary before attempting to create a solution.