Published on: 23/03/2012
On 7 March 2012, IRC and Florida International University (FIU), finalised the agreement to expand IRC’s work on sustainable service delivery into Burkina Faso under the USAID programme: West Africa Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Initiative (WA-WASH).
The work will be carried out in partnership with Eau-Vive - a French organisation working to improve access to water services in rural African communities - and the General Directorate of Water Resources, the national body for policy development and planning. It will continue through till 31 July 2015.
The approach used in Burkina Faso will be modelled on Triple-S, an IRC-led initiative to address the challenge of providing rural people with sustainable water services, which is already operating in Ghana and Uganda. One of the objectives of the work in Burkina Faso will be to develop and implement improved models for sustainability of rural and peri-urban WASH service delivery that are replicable throughout West Africa.
The work will focus on Burkina Faso’s administrative Sahel region, which falls within the dry and drought-prone band, also known as the Sahel, that extends from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. Amélie Dubé, programme officer for IRC’s Africa team, says that the focus on this region “offers an opportunity to look at the challenge of providing sustainable water services in an area where water is scarce - a challenge shared with the larger Sahel.” The region was also chosen because it was the pilot area for recent national reforms of water delivery. Consequently, institutional structures for water service delivery are already in place, including local water user committees and delegation contracts for private operators. However, these structures are not fully operational or are not being used.
Dubé foresees that during the first year, the project will study how the current system for water and sanitation service delivery is functioning - how communes and local operators manage water services together; how communes monitor private water service operators and water committees; and, how communes monitor existing infrastructure, in terms of breakdowns, planning repairs, and rehabilitation.
During the second and following years, IRC will work with local partners and the regional office of the General Directorate of Water Resources to address the gaps and weak points that endanger the quality or sustainability of water services. “Although we have some idea of what the gaps are and where they lie, it is difficult to say more on the next steps at this stage. It will depend on what we find and where the local priorities are”, says Dubé. She also says that in four years time she hopes to see communes and service providers who are able to properly plan for, maintain, monitor, and fund the rehabilitation of new and existing water infrastructure. But in the end, she adds, “it is about making sure the highest number of people – and ideally all – have reliable and sustainable access to water.”
Patrick Moriarty, Triple-S director, also recognises the potential of expanding IRC’s work on sustainable service delivery into Burkina Faso. He says “Burkina Faso is a country with a vibrant and fast developing water sector, where IRC has a long history. Through WA-WASH, we add an additional country and a new project to our work on creating water services that last. This brings a new context in which to test and further develop approaches to delivering sustainable water services.”
Lessons from Burkina Faso, along with lessons coming out Triple-S initiatives in Ghana and Uganda, will feed the growing body of knowledge on how to strengthen water sectors and create sustainable water services in different contexts. Dubé adds that the work in Burkina may have particular relevance for other Sahel countries, “the opportunities for putting the service delivery approach into wide-scale operation are major. We can create impact from Sudan all the way to Mauritania.”
Working in Burkina Faso also opens doors for IRC to build alliances with like-minded and complementary organisations, dedicated to ensuring people have access to indefinite water services. “Perhaps even more promising is that this project brings a whole new set of Francophone partners committed to the vision of delivering sustainable and appropriate water services”, says Moriarty. In addition to implementing a Triple-S-like approach in Burkina Faso, IRC will support the WA-WASH programme by focusing on:
WA-WASH concentrates on several WASH issues including: sanitation coverage in rural settings, capacity building, management at different levels, knowledge sharing, and water delivery both for domestic and other uses, e.g. small irrigation in rural settings. The initiative, funded by USAID and coordinated by FIU-leader of the Global Water for Sustainability (GLOWS) consortium, runs between 2011 and 2015 in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Ghana.
By: Angelica de Jesus, project officer, IRC and Sarah Carriger, Consultant.
