FactSheets
structured learning at National level:
Uganda has a relatively advanced policy framework that enhances provision of Water and sanitation services. This frame work has clearly defined roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders at different levels (National, district, sub-county and water user). The core emphasis has been placed at the coordination and harmonization of these stakeholders right from National to district level. An achievement that is attributed to Sector Wide Approach to planning adopted by
the sector about 10 years ago. The approach has been instrumental in aligning the government, the development partners, and civil society to a common policy, development plan and expenditure programme1. It has also provided a framework for stakeholder coordination, joint monitoring and review.
Despite this achievement, WASH coverage and functionality appear not to be increasing significantly (JSR, 2010). In fact functionality and access to water are some of the many challenges likely to affect achievement of the MDG target for water and sanitation. 1 Water and Environment Sector Performance Report (SPR)
2009 Functionality has stagnated at 80% over the last five years. The Sector Performance Report 2010 shows that Access has hovered at 61 -65% for the last five years despite continuous investments in water supply. The other challenges in the sector include; dwindling sector investment, gap between policy and
practice at district level, inadequate coordination of actors at district and sub county level, weak community management system among others. All these point to one fact that the sector needs to do better and this can be achieved through a transformation to an approach that triggers adaptability and innovation in a cost effective and efficient manner. Read more
Sharing Experiences to Improve Service Delivery
Learning can play a significant role in improving performance of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector. In order to make learning context specific, NETWAS defines learning as it is used by the lead sector agency; the Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE). According the District Implementation Manual developed by the MWE, Learning is Reflection to improve action. As the WASH sector has many different actors, sector learning is a multi-stakeholder reflection process that results in improved action and improvement of sector performance. Read more
On the 5th and 6th of December 2011 a national learning forum was held for the water and sanitation sector at city Royal Hotel in Bugolobi. This provided a platform for reflection on the effectiveness of the existing self supply initiatives in Uganda as means of informing the National Self Supply Action Plan towards enhancing access and functionality of rural water systems. Self supply as a complementary approach to conventional National Self Supply Learning Forum 2011 water supply systems enhances personal/private investment in water supply and has been adopted in many communities and households to provide their own water. This is not new because Self supply initiatives ranging from simple technologies like shallow water wells to more sophisticated technologies such as drilled boreholes have been in existence for a long time and the WATSUP data (2010) shows that self supply accounts for about 10% of water sources. About 60 participants from Technical support Units, NGOs, District local government, Private Sector, Policy makers, Development Partners, Media, and National level WASH practitioners attended the forum to analyze Regional and field based experiences under the pillars of Policy, Institutional support, Private sector skills, Technologies and financing. This summary note highlights the deliberations and outcomes of the forum. Read more