Monitoring & Evaluation

AfricaSan is now five! And we are learning fast

This blog was jointly produced by John Butterworth (IRC Ethiopia Country Director) and Nick Dickinson (IRC Associate / WASHNote). It was posted on IRCWASH.org.

AfricaSan5 just like a five-year old, reflects a sanitation and hygiene sector that is nowhere near mature, but is growing up fast and is full of ambition. And when you get to five, we know you have a good chance of going all the way in life and achieving great things. We need to grow up quickly to answer the call in the Camissa Statement, where the conference stakeholders “call upon Heads of State of the Africa Union to declare an Africa-wide state of emergency on sanitation and hygiene and to be sanitation and hygiene champions in their respective countries.”

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Are national WASH M&E system important for accountability and transparency?

When policy and the roles and responsibilities of service providers and government are unclear, it is difficult for users
and their representatives in civil society to advocate and tackle issues of accountability. Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring basic and safely managed WASH services? When these are clear with clear contractual arrangements, are there also agreed ways to measure and evaluate service performance? Who is measuring and communicating results? It is crucial to hold parties accountable for their actions and promises for this life sustaining services.

Sometimes civil society may fill the evidence gap with their own metrics. But government and service providers may choose to ignore the results on the basis that they are not ‘official’, ‘approved’ or even deemed to be ‘wrong’.

Establishing an information system is complex  and it requires clarifying a matrix of roles and responsibilities so that it is clear who is reporting what and why. Using and communicating results is an important step in holding sector stakeholders accountable .

Establishing a national WASH M&E system in a participatory approach is one way to develop consensus and ensure parties are all working towards the same goals to sustain services. Indeed, for change and improvement at all levels, there is a need to engage in dialogue around sector performance in WASH service delivery.

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