Looking for the right formula?

Jambo!

The perfect combination for water management has yet to be found. It all comes down to the correct dispersal and use of power at interconnected scales.

An article I was reading sought to understand components used in successful and non successful projects. It compared an integration of different actors regarding water management in Nyamagabe, Rwanda and Masaka, Uganda. 

Both water projects have benefitted from qualitative infrastructure and are ranked as top / better performers than average infrastructures.These case studies are representative of the pre-existing assumptions around decentralisation. Indeed, this trend emerged from the idea that it would enable non-elites to be included in public matters. Similarly, local authorities were expected to be provided sufficient resources to help the transitioning of decision making (Rondinelli and Cheema,1983*). 

Of course, politics and power are always looming above any decision making or project inducing deciison, particularly in developing countries. In Africa, political instability and constant regime change for certain countries effectively lead to three ‘misses’ : misrule, mismanagement and misguided reform. That is why I believe that Power is in itself a notion too big and too complex to not be addressed as a integral factor relative to efficient management. 

Safe water provision was attributed to district authorities, who were in theory supposed to be assisted by local authorities and communities, as well as receive help from eternal factors such as NGOs. The Rwandan case was much more successful than that in Uganda, despite both having a combination of user committees, local and district agent involvement and partnerships with the private sector. 

In Nyamagabe, the user committees established in the 1980s were rapidly replaced as they were  highly inefficient in accomplishing objectives - to look after water resources, ensuring good hygiene standards. Instead, demand driven semi-autonomous groups replaced them, doubling the capacity of the non-profit generating water bodies. The government retained a form of responsibility for well protection and piped water introduction, until a fund took over the development of water delivery infrastructure, though it was highly regulated by state action. In this scenario, committees started to come back, with an improved role to promote hygiene and education about sanitation. The contracts between the local administration and the co-operative include management of protected water resources with harmonised action from water user committees to properly represent interests of consumers. This entire example proved how active action from the central state (through regular reporting requirements b local authorities) proved to be efficient for multi-actor coordination. 

In Uganda, the local communities were also expected to participate, but at a much greater scale: the entire community was accountable for its water sources. The members were expected to express their needs in written form, which was then sent off to local administrations, who then wrote to district water department sand so on. Cash contributions were then generated in a top-down manner after budget examination. They were asked to contribute in any way they could (land, free labour, project surveillance…). Contributions from the private sector implemented technologies on behalf of authorities, however the required workload to do so was greater than staff capacity in the district water offices. As a whole, these operations had positive impacts and lead to a general improvement in water provision, but major weaknesses arose from the fact that there human and financial resources lacked. The district administration was reported as unsatisfactory by the authors of this study, and the committees did not complete their role in collecting money, partly due to fear of conflict. Private sector involvement with community management proved to lead to poor quality of service delivery. 

The fact that it worked world in Rwanda may be tied to the following reasons, notably the ways in which rural community involvement was managed. In Uganda, it was expected that the entire community be accountable for its management, which was not viewed as realistically feasible by the researchers. In Rwanda. only one person was in charge of well supervision and well being. 

Unsurprisingly, mismanagement and maladministration were the main causes of failure. 

Further, top-down legal enforcement guided private and participatory actions in Rwanda, which I think is key to good governance. A form of legal accountability is, I believe, necessary to define a scope for project management. Indeed, In Uganda. the failure of government induced a lack of ownership for any project, as locals believed management responsibilities lay mostly with authorities and not users. Although the decentralisation trend in the 80s largely moved away from state involvement, implying that private or community based projects had to take action due to failure of the public sector, I believe public involvement to be a prerequisite for good governance, as defended by Jones (2014). 

However, situations differ in each context, and although I have come to understand top-down enforcements to me necessary, I believe committees (or similar structures) involving both state and local actors to ensure efficient negotiation are important to ensure gaps between reality of life in communities and policy decisions be matched. 

Indeed, the risk with the involvement of external actors from NGOs or the private sector with bottom-up approaches are that by trying to attain consensus in ‘win-win’ situations, frustration amongst community members upon lacking delivery of objectives may lead to conflict and disenchantment. This is the ‘myth of consensus’, which emerges from optimistic promises based on social constructions of reality, presented to locals and not factoring in the embedded context I refer to in previous blogposts. 

Kwaheri !

* Rondinelli DA, Cheema GS (eds). 1983. Decentralisation and Development: Policy Implementation in Developing Countries. Sage: Beverley Hills, London & New Delhi.