USAID/Southern Africa resilient waters program : end-term performance evaluation : assessing the design of a transboundary program

Agency for International Development/Southern Africa activity implemented by Chemonics International with a consortium of partners including the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at the University of Stellenbosch, Genesis Analytics, JG Afrika, and Peace Parks Foundation (PPF). Aiming to build more resilient and water-secure Southern African communities and ecosystems in the Limpopo and Okavango River basins, Resilient Waters worked at the local, national, and transboundary levels to improve the management of natural resources and increase access to safe drinking water and sanitation services. Resilient Waters was designed as a highly ambitious program of work, building on the baselines, activities, and research of previous and concurrent programs, specifically the Southern African Regional Environmental Program (SAREP) and the Resilience in the Limpopo River Basin Program (RESILIM). This performance evaluation focused primarily on program design aspects, assessing the successes and challenges of working in an integrated way across different thematic areas of biodiversity; livelihoods; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and climate adaptation. A further query revolved around how best to work across basins and landscapes and vertically from regional to local levels in terms of governance, policy formulation and implementation. Having interviewed over 50 stakeholders and reviewing internal and external documentation, the Evaluation Team noted that Resilient Waters made much appreciated and significant contributions to water resource management within the two water basins. While COVID-19 hampered Resilient Waters’ efforts, the Resilient Waters approach succeeded in important ways: i) by strengthening the institutions mandated to oversee water and natural resources management; ii) by broadening the discourse to include other stakeholder groups; iii) by emphasizing the benefits of integrated approaches across sectors; and iv) by introducing a more meaningful gender equality and social inclusion lens than merely counting the numbers of marginalized participants engaged in activities. Further conceptual framing appears to have been warranted to better reflect Resilient Waters’ aims and how to understand and measure success through a resilience lens that is more nuanced geographically and thematically. Limited integration occurred across sectors at the community level, given that grantees often operated in silos with minimal geographic overlap among activities. Working with so many institutions, across two sizeable river basins and attempting to meet USAID expectations by working from the community to regional level was likely overly ambitious and did not allow the project to target support optimally. The contract indicators and targets were not sufficiently focused on resilience, integration, or sustainability and may have led to a business-as-usual approach instead of looking for more innovative processes, activities, and solutions. Despite being considered a “follow-on” to SAREP and RESILIM, few interventions directly built on these projects. Ultimately, the five-year project timeline, and the even shorter timeframes for grants, limited the potential for sustainability. Key recommendations revolve around optimizing partner contributions and stakeholder ownership; ensuring that indicators and targets are resilience-oriented; overlapping activities more geographically to allow for more intentional integration; paying more attention to relational mapping to understand interdependencies and mutual accountabilities; and designing learning loops with partner interests more specifically in mind.