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Stockholm syndrome
For obvious reasons, Sweden and Stockholm have inspired several WASH bloggers this month, drawing analogies between the WASH sector and Swedish smörgåsbord and the Vasa ship. As a Stockholm resident, I can only be very satisfied with such inspiration. But, I must admit that initially I was not very inspired by this year’s World Water […]
Only the Minister of Water and Environment can decommission a defunct water facility in Uganda: myth or reality
By Robert Otim, District Learning Facilitator, Lira district, Uganda – In an Inter-district, meeting (IDM) organised by Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) June 2013 in Kitgum, decommissioning of defunct water systems was a major concern cutting across all the 15 districts of Northern Uganda. Since the end of the humanitarian period and subsequent withdrawal […]
Public finance isn’t a dirty word – it’s essential to get services to the poor
By Patrick Moriarty – Three moments stood out for me in a busy week in Stockholm. The first was when WSUP’s Guy Norman said that Public Finance wasn’t a dirty word – a point that I couldn’t agree with more or more wholeheartedly – and that is often overlooked in the rush to identify market […]
A Swedish Smorgasbord of sustainability: compacts, checks and clauses
By Harold Lockwood – During the recent World Water Week in Stockholm, the Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS) of the Netherlands Foreign Ministry and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre organised a joint side event in the Sheraton hotel in downtown Stockholm to present and discuss findings from two major reviews, one from the […]
Warning: danger zone ahead! Or not?
In one of his previous blogs, Patrick Moriarty posed the concept of a danger zone, referring to the coverage level, at which countries that succeeded in raising first time coverage by constructing new infrastructure (capital investment) fail to maintain the infrastructure (due to lack of capital maintenance) or to operate it adequately to provide a […]
Not-so-limited mechanised boreholes
Elder Joe, whom you still may remember from a previous blog post, is the proud secretary of a water committee in the outskirts of Odumase town in Ghana. The committee looks after a handpump that was installed only last year. The committee is doing well. He shows us the booklet with the bank statements and […]
The caretaker always SMSes twice
The costs of getting spare parts for handpumps can sometimes be higher than the costs of the spares themselves. Imagine a handpump where some of the nuts of bolts have worn out. These might cost a dollar at a spare part retail dealer; but the bus ticket to town might cost three dollars. That is […]
On strokes and leaks, or how to assess functionality and service levels of handpumps
By: Marieke Adank, programme officer at IRC The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) in Ghana is developing a framework for assessing and monitoring water services. In this, it will monitor the extent to which service levels are met, as well as the performance of water service providers and service authorities as per nationally set […]
USAID and Rotary International adopt innovative sustainability monitoring tool
By Harold Lockwood – This is great news and fantastic to see USAID adopting and promoting this approach which aims to really track and better understand the underlying causes of poor sustainability in the WASH sector. Sustaining WASH services is complex and dependent not only the hardware (the pumps, latrines and pipes), but also a […]
At the start of true scale in monitoring
From testing monitoring service delivery indicators and tools in 3 pilot districts by the CWSA and Triple-S to applying monitoring at scale in 64 Ghanaian districts, one quarter of the country. That is what will happen in the framework of SMARTerWASH in the coming 3 years.
USAID’s new water strategy – when the numbers don’t add up
By Harold Lockwood (Aguaconsult) Well, probably it’s a cliché, but the USAID water strategy has had the gestation period of an elephant, but the good news is that now it’s out and its congratulations to the team in the water office of USAID for pulling this together and for bringing a clear focus on water […]
Error 503: Service not available
By: Andrés Gil, IRC, Honduras As I was doing my interview with the technician of the Municipal Environment Unit, I encountered already the first limitation: “Error 503: Service not available”; internet was so slow in this municipality that it was practically not available. And this while we were talking about the implementation of the new […]
Paris, s’éveille – waking up to the Paris Declaration
“Paris, s’éveille” (Paris wakes up), sang Jacques Dutronc, observing how the mess of the night is cleaned away, making place for the buzz of another day of work. Likewise, the WASH sector is waking up to the Paris Declaration, cleaning up the mess of often uncoordinated aid efforts. This declaration laid out the principles for […]
“We ate all the meat; there are only bones to chew on now”
“Comimos toda la carne; sólo nos quedan los huesos” (we ate all the meat; there are only bones to chew on now”, said Luis Romero of CONASA (the water and sanitation policy making body in Honduras), in response to the graphs below, when we presented these as part of the sharing of the results of […]
Flying the flag – but breaking the pump?
One of the topics of discussion during this week’s Triple-S annual meeting was around harmonization of approaches to rural water supply between donors and governments. Presenting the experiences in Ghana, Vida Duti presented this nice map, showing which donors operate in which part of the country. One could interpret this map in a positive way; […]
water services that last 
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