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Chapter 2:
Towards sustainable and equitable water and environmental services delivery: Capacity development for multiple stakeholders from 11 towns around Lake Victoria

Maarten W. Blokland

UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands

Abstract

Around 2,200 stakeholders representing six major stakeholder groups from 11 towns in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were trained as part of the Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative (LVWATSANI), a programme that is being promoted by UN-HABITAT. The capacity development (CD) component of LV- WATSANI aims to develop and empower local stakeholders with a view to secur- ing their active interest and participation towards the sustainable and equitable delivery of water and environmental services.
The CD interventions were designed in response to the specific challenges in the towns. These challenges were surfaced through town-by-town inquiries that mapped the local actors, their relationships and the issues that constrain services development. The identified shortcomings were grouped under five headings: fo- cus on disadvantaged people; town institutions and organizations; service cover- age and quality; public engagement and access; and procurement and contracting. The ensuing programme of 21 different CD interventions comprised 98 events of about two days each that were implemented over a 10-month period. The inter- ventions were organized once or several times, at town, national or regional level, the choice of which depended among others on the learning objectives and the size and characteristics of the target groups. In general, the 98 events brought together all local actors and emphasized joint understanding and ownership of the challenges and action to resolve these.
The CD interventions were output-focused and concluded with an action plan whereby each participant or group of participants identified and programmed lo- cal actions that were within their authority and capability to implement and that would make a contribution to the improvement of local water and environmental services. The impact of the CD interventions was measured by a second round of inquiries in all 11 towns that not only inventoried the appreciation for the CD interventions but also particularly set out to collect evidence of action plan imple- mentation. The latter showed that individual and small-scale action plans had been started and some had even been successfully implemented. As could be expect- ed at such an early stage, the larger and more complex plans were encountering problems requiring more time for consultation, resource allocation and alignment with local developmental programmes and processes. The project was concluded with one top-level consultation in each country that provided an opportunity for presenting the developmental challenges in water, sanitation and environment,

the contributions that were being made by implementing the action plans and for inviting senior stakeholders to commit to actions that would resolve constraints in implementing these plans.