People not projects – the low-technology approach to improving rural water supply

Simply providing hand pumps and conventionally protected wells to small and impoverished rural communities is rarely sustainable. In much of Africa, high-cost lined wells usually do not, in the long term, provide better quality than progressive improvements undertaken by users using local materials and their own funds. Extension workers and policy-makers tend to focus on highly technical solutions to water provision. They need to focus more on offering a wider choice of solutions to communities, including improving existing traditional water supplies and enabling them to implement their choices.

A project co-ordinated by SWL Consultants investigated 2,300traditional water sources in Zambia and assessed 200 pilot projects in whichcommunities made low-cost improvements to existing sources. The project’s finalreport questions whether the drive towards achieving universal access to safewater puts too much emphasis on replacing traditional water sources byconventionally protected systems.

When projects are implemented by donors and engineers:

• Instead of being enabled to make informedchoices about available and sustainable technologies, communities are onlyoffered high cost, highly subsidised options.
• Outsiders promote communal systems even wheremost family groups already have semi-private supplies which they prefer to useand are much more willing to invest in.
• Hygiene issues may be ignored as engineeringsolutions are regarded as safe and foolproof.
• Water sources that are constructed are often notthose prioritised by communities in the long term and soon fall into disrepair.
• High standards are set without considerations ofsustainability and funds are wasted as systems stop functioning. Subsequent‘rehabilitation’ programmes amount to deferred maintenance.

Traditional sources are neglected as planners do not regardthem as an asset. This is particularly the case with scoopholesand unlined traditionally constructed wells. These sources serve small groups,are constructed in their thousands every year and used by over 180 millionpeople in Africa. Scoopholes often have water equalin quality to fully lined hand-dug wells which come with windlasses, drainage, soakaways and covers. Lining them makes them more reliable,so people do not have to go to more distant sources in the dry season.Providing top lining, apron and drainage to unlined wells reduces levels ofcontamination by factors of 10 to 100. The costs of such improvements are verylow (as little as US$30).

The report notes that:

• Water quality in traditional sources is rarelygrossly contaminated.
• Lining of wells provides water with as low arisk of contamination as conventionally protected wells but at one-tenth of thecost.
• Families that own a source are prepared to pay alarge part of the cost of improving it. They can also generate income from it,increasing its value to them.
• The concept of low-cost improvements is popular:the number of users increased after improvements were carried out and demandfor improvements far exceeds supply.

The initiative has demonstrated that:

• Initial government scepticism about low-costimprovements can be overcome by engaging extension workers and planners indesigning surveys and drafting and piloting manuals.
• Scaling up of this approach via co-operationbetween government, donors and NGOs offers an opportunity to make a significantdifferenc to the lives of a large number of people,for whom more complicated technologies are neither attainable nor sustainable.
• Low cost improvements should be linked to relevanthealth promotion. This would provide small communities with the opportunity toreduce the risks to health from poor water use practice.

Low-cost upgradingof traditional sources offers an alternative approach for small scatteredcommunities and a wider choice for larger communities with many existing watersources. These are common throughout Africa andencouraging local initiatives and treating traditional sources as assets needto become part of rural water supply strategies alongside conventional solutions.