DFID should ensure sustainability of its WASH programmes – independent review

62.9 million people – almost the population of the UK – that is how many people DFID claim to have reached with water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions between 2011 and 2015.

In our first ever ‘impact review’ the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) found this impressive figure to be based on credible evidence.

But what does reaching 62.9 million people really mean? Have lives been transformed? And have the results been sustainable?

Research shows that WASH interventions can have hugely positive ramifications for people’s lives. Access to water and sanitation and improved hygiene are obviously vitally important in their own right, but they can also contribute to improved school attendance, better nutrition and greater gender equality.

Often women and girls do most of the water collection – we met women on one of our visits who spend up to five hours a day fetching water – and distant water sources and inadequate sanitation can expose women and girls to sexual violence.

So what difference did the £713 million UK aid spent on WASH between 2010 and 2014 make to education, to health or to inequality? And was the impact sustained? Unfortunately we found DFID has not collected important data needed to comprehensively answer these questions.

For some programmes evidence has been collected – for example a £48.5 million project in Bangladesh is improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene and has demonstrated wide reaching benefits. This project reached 21.4 million people with hygiene promotion, 1.8 million with access to clean water and improved WASH access for more than one million children in schools. Beyond these headline results the project also led to a significant increase in school enrolments, a reduction in school drop-out rates (particularly for girls), and a drop in the diarrhoea rate for under-fives from 11% to 5.1%.

But despite this and other positive cases, we found crucial impact data is not routinely collected and used by DFID. When we visited both Mozambique and Zimbabwe we discovered that local authorities were compiling detailed data on health statistics and school attendance in the areas where DFID was investing in WASH, but that this data was not collected or used by DFID to inform programmes. Looking ahead, the Global Goals commitment to ‘leaving no one behind’ is likely to increase the imperative for DFID to obtain more detailed baseline data and monitor the impact of its programmes on different groups, including  the poorest and most vulnerable.

Another crucial aspect to successful WASH projects is sustainability. But our review found that DFID is not doing enough to monitor whether its results are sustained.

Worryingly, in none of the programmes we reviewed did DFID require its implementers to continue monitoring beyond project completion. In some instances we found that DFID’s delivery partners were monitoring sustainability for their own purposes, but these results weren’t reported to DFID or used by them.  

I know that sustainability is a real challenge, particularly for WASH programmes in the poorest areas. But DFID is lagging behind some other leading donors in this area, which is why we have recommended the department takes urgent remedial action on the issue of sustainability.

Looking forward, DFID has committed to ‘reaching’ a further 60 million people by 2020. To ensure this aid really has a transformative effect, DFID now needs to improve how it embeds sustainability in its programmes, and how it maximises their impact on people’s lives.

So, what next?                                    

Within weeks, DFID will respond to our recommendations and later this month we will present our findings to parliament’s International Development Committee. In around a year we will follow up on how DFID has responded to our recommendations.

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