The sector wide investment and financing tool (SWIFT) : model overview : working paper draft

This paper presents a computerized tool developed by the Water and Sanitation Program – Africa to assist African governments in analysing the financial status of their water sectors.  The Sector Wide Investment and Financing Tool (SWIFT) was developed in response to demand from African governments. Increasingly, the need to understand the relationship between finances in the sector and outcomes was emerging as important. Resource flows studies conducted by WSP-Af in a number of African countries pointed to the need for the comparative analysis of public expenditure data and resource requirement estimates. The primary function of a SWIFT analysis then is to understand the financial balances in the water sector of a given country and to allow strategic analysis of options available to close those gaps.  This tool has been developed as a generic representation of a water sector and is designed to assist African countries to develop simple financial plans for their water sector. It can work based on rough information as it is available, but ideally would be used in concert with more rigorously collected and accurate data. This feature in fact points to a second, non-obvious, use for the model and analysis. The model analysis can help sector decision makers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their existing sector information and monitoring systems. As it is the data from those that is used by SWIFT, gaps that exist, and sensitivity analysis around those gaps, facilitate an understanding of the planning cost linked to poor information.
 In many African contexts it is this information assessment use that is the primary use of the model.  Planning functionality is a secondary use, dependent on the availability of the data. Users find that initially it is the demonstration effect of the planning analysis that helps to mobilize improved planning efforts. Ultimately this tool, adapted to the country specific situation in which it is used, allows for an annual iterative input into financial planning and budget design efforts. [authors abstract]