Community management and sustainability of rural water facilities in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of whether community management in water service delivery affects the sustainability of rural water facilities (RWFs) at village level, in terms of their technical and managerial aspects, and what role capacity building of users and providers plays in this process. Empirical research was conducted in nine villages in the districts of Kondoa and Mpwapwa, in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. The results reveal that sustainability of RWFs is in jeopardy and that villages far from the District Council headquarters experience numerous technical and management problems. The national water framework does not clearly define the roles of the key actors at the district, village and household levels. District Water Departments do not have enough resources to render the services needed adequately and in a timely manner. In all the villages studied there were no local technicians trained for basic operation and maintenance. This implies that the concept of community management cannot be taken at face value; its actual meaning needs to be specified in order to offer a realistic and feasible option in the decentralization of rural water provision. With regard to capacity development, we recommend establishing workshops for clusters of villages to repair breakdowns and coordinate spare parts.

Leadership in knowledge and capacity development in the water sector: a status review

“…Based on this, they identify the range of concrete measures required to strengthen human resources in this sector and to counter the rural-urban brain drain. The paper by Mandara et al (2013) focuses on the required capacity for decentralized rural water service provision in Tanzania. The authors argue that in the pursuit of decentralizing rural water services, at the community level, villages and households have been assigned technical and managerial roles without the parallel strengthening and provision of the necessary capacity and resources.…”

Effects of Community Perceptions and Institutional Capacity on Smallholder Farmers’ Responses to Water Scarcity: Evidence from Arid Northwestern China

“…The analysis also shows that community interactional capacities and socio-economic factors may influence community actions to mitigate and adapt to adverse effects of local water scarcity. Our findings provide insights for understanding social and institutional aspects of rural farming communities toward sustainable response decisions to overcome water scarcity challenges.Sustainability 2019, 11, 483 2 of 21 variations of community-based approaches emerged and were largely considered for adoption in many developing nations [3,6,7].To effectively and efficiently manage water resources, rural communities are the focal point and the community approach demonstrated a successful strategy with a wide range of development pathways [7]. The pathways can create opportunities for rural communities to tailor and implement their own plans for water management and development processes.…”

“…Through pursuing socio-economic objectives of rural communities, the approach facilitates linkages between water resource conservation and community livelihood enhancement [8,9]. For instance, evidence was found in a variety of settings that community engagement improves sustainability of water supply systems [6,8,[10][11][12][13], water quality improvement [14], conflict management [15], and other social outcomes [16]. Kativhu et al [10] observed that the sustainability of water supply facilities could be improved through building stronger capacities in technical, social, and institutional aspects.…”

Accountability as an element of governmentality: an investigation of national and local executive accountability practices in the water section in Tanzania

“…These initiatives are intended to mitigate the challenges afflicting the rural water sector in Tanzania. The challenges include, but are not limited, to the number of water points that quickly become dysfunctional after few years of construction and information gaps between the district officials and villagers (Jiménez and Perez-Foguet, 2010;Mandara et al, 2013). These challenges are increasingly calling for measures from international donors, research organizations and national government officials to leverage on the use of ICTs and mobile phones to facilitate a wide range of service-related activities, including reporting failures of public services.…”

“…They identify challenges such as: dilapidated infrastructure (Daily News, 2010;Dill, 2010;The Guardian, 2013;Kjellen, 2006), community-based urban water management in fringe neighborhoods and participatory evaluation of community-based water and sanitation programmes (Kaliba, 2002;Kyessi, 2005), corruption (Kroliwoski, 2014;Stalgren, 2006), rendering existing water services more sustainable for the citizens (Pearce et al, 2016), the deterioration of water facilities a few years after construction (Jimenez and Perez-Foguet, 2010), failure to repair water infrastructure due to capacity and funding problems at local levels (Mandara et al, 2013), vandalism of the water infrastructure (Deule, 2010;Kjellen, 2006;Pigeon, 2012), informal markets (Kjellen, 2000;Nganyanyuka et al, 2014), leakages in the water infrastructure (Daily News, 2013;The Citizen 2013), and the general mismanagement of the water sector in Tanzania, including the information management systems and donor influences (Georgiadou et al, 2011;Rottenberg, 2002).…”