Moving sustainability concepts to on the ground improvements:

the Sustainable Water Service Delivery project in Ghana.

Presentation of paper written by Peter Ryan and Raphael Sufyan Sulemani. Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery

Symposium, Addis Ababa, 10th April 2013

Raphael Sufyan Sulemani

Contents

• Context• Methodology• Model development• Testing and refinement• Reflections

Context

• Service not hardware provision : the great leap forward for RWS

• Emergent concepts > on the ground implementation

• Decision support system aka “model” of sustainability elements

Methodology

Complicated model? • No, a decision support tool• To assess/predict service sustainability

at community level• Basis: extensive data collection

– Quantitative: 4670 hh, 441 Watsan committee and 1509 waterpoint – FLOW-Excel-SPSS

– Qualitative: interviews/groups, specialised research , analysis of technical aspects of waterpoints

• Model construction, testing, refinement• Handover, embedding, utilisation

Model development• Welding disparate inputs into a

working tool– criteria, indicators, weightings

• Form into questionnaire• Automatic generation of

likelihood of sustainability for each criteria, and in general– Output is indication of strengths

and weaknesses that can be addressed as needed

Testing and refinement • Tool tested in the field

in two regions• Found to “predict”

outcomes correctly• Counter intuitive

situations reflected well• Need for simplification,

avoidance of duplication

Reflections Strengths

• Tool provides the right answers

• It can be used in predictive or evaluation modes

• It pinpoints areas for corrective action

• It is usable at:– community level with District

support (certainly)– District level with community

inputs (potentially)

Challenges• How to utilise across vast

numbers of communities• How to link into national

monitoring systems• In some locations the field is

becoming cluttered – turf issues

• Need for coalescing tools where this brings user benefits

Thank you!

The work described here was led by Destina Samani of WSA Ghana, with Mathew Ocholi, Raphael Sufyan

Sulemani, Aime Metchebon and other agencies: it was supported by the Conrad N Hilton Foundation.