Kenya rural water supply : programs, progress, prospects

This paper evaluates the impact of the national program and the reasons behind its failure and makes policy recommendations for future A.I.D. water supply projects. The two types of activities supported by Kenya"s Ministry of Water Development (MWD) -- systems built and operated by MWD and self-help (Harambee) water projects -- are discussed. Of special interest is a Harambee program financed by A.I.D. and the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere (CARE) which succeeded in building only 1/3 of its scheduled projects, with increases in per capita costs of over 100%. Complexity of design, lack of supervision and government support, widely scattered site locations, and the large number of scheduled users were among the problems responsible for these and other MWD project failures. The MWD program"s impact is analyzed in terms of reliability, service to users, and socioeconomic, health, and other benefits of rural water supply. The author"s main conclusion is that delivering piped water to individual metered connections is inappropriate for rural Kenya due to the lack of engineers, high capital costs, inadequate operational/maintenance funding, and ineffective administration. Specific recommendations are: (1) that groundwater resources be developed and that use of improved shallow wells and handpumps be encouraged; (2) that new projects demand only as much institutional support as is available, while upgrading support capabilities; (3) that additional funding sources for the program be located; (4) that increased system reliability become a primary A.I.D. focus; (5) that health and sanitation measures be included only if existing community practices are deemed inadequate; and (6) that A.I.D. finance self-help projects on a regional or national, rather than a piecemeal, basis. Appendices are included on major donors to the Kenyan program, reasons for diesel system unreliability, water development expenditures, evaluation itinerary, and data collected on selected systems.