End-of-project evaluation (EPE): Triple-S – Water Services that Last, an IRC initiative 2009-2014 : Uganda country visit report

Triple-S was a six-year multi-country learning initiative that aimed to help address the challenge of rural water supply sustainability. The project was implemented by IRC and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its objective was to push for a paradigm shift towards "sustainable rural water services at scale",

This report provides findings from the evaluation of the Triple-S project work in one of the two focus countries: Uganda. It evaluates the following elements of the Uganda workstream:

• design
• outputs, with a special focus on experiments on (1) Updating district implementation manual to improve harmonisation & coordination, (2) Using mobile phones to improve functionality of rural water sources, (3) Developing a business model for hand pump mechanics associations, (4) Facilitating local monitoring of rural water service delivery (SDIs), (5) Adopting a sub-county model to improve operations and maintenance, (6) Strengthening learning and adaptive capacity through learning alliances,and  (7) Analysing the performance of Service Delivery Models (SDM)
• outcomes on (1) Service delivery approach (SDA), (2) Learning and adaptive capacity, and (3) Harmonisation and alignment
• direct and broader impacts

Among the report's key lessons and recommendations are to widen the scope of the SDA from simple rural water supplies to piped supplies and sanitation, to support service providers especially the private sector, and to focus on the financing aspects.