Sector Results and Learning:
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Critically assess site selection decisions. Many rural water supply projects in sub-Saharan Africa are based on the installation of hand pumps at public water points. One of the key expected benefits of these investments is time savings. Surprisingly, references to rural water planning rarely provide systematic approaches to optimizing distance related benefits. MCC staff are reviewing how best to design future projects by critically assessing how MCC and MCAs: (i) identify the number and location of point sources that maximizes benefits to consumers, and (ii) determine the appropriate site location strategy, such as selection by lottery, largest unserved population, most distant unserved populations, minimization of the maximum distance, and minimization of the average distance between household and sources. Decisions related to these two points should be informed by a much better understanding of the demand – and willingness to pay for public water point services. We must also have a much better sense of the costs and particularly those costs which will be passed on to consumers. The MCC is looking to identify the degree to which benefit streams are influenced by distance to inform facility location in future projects.

Ensure that a project’s stated outcomes and objective can be measured. If necessary, incorporate elements in the project design that make these measurements possible. Physical losses were a key benefit stream targeted by the WNP but were difficult to measure because the water network infrastructure had not been designed for it. Valves and piping that were required to measure this outcome had not been included, as they were not required for operations of the infrastructure. Without a reliable way to measure physical losses, it was not possible for MCC’s independent evaluator to accurately/comprehensively estimate the project’s impact on physical losses. MCC has already implemented this lesson in Mongolia.

Ensure the efficiency of MCC investments. The ex-ante cost-benefit analysis of this Activity estimated that costs exceeded benefits, and the evaluation supported this expectation, finding relatively small impacts on time saving and no impacts on water-borne illness. These analyses suggest that there were likely more efficient uses for MCC’s funding. Adhering to MCC’s recently-adopted investment criteria should help ensure the efficiency of MCC investments going forward. In addition, during project design, teams can use early economic analysis to establish a cap for the cost of a project given the benefits that can be expected and work to ensure the project investment does not exceed that cost ceiling without a commensurate increase in expected benefits.

Validate expectations for changes in productive use of time as a result of time savings from reduced time spent fetching water. Changes in productive use of time was built into the program logic as a key outcome of the compact. Evaluation results showed that time spent fetching water at the interim stage was relatively low on average, thus it is unlikely that households will realize increases in income on the basis of re-allocations of time spent on household activities to income generating activities as a result of time savings. It is not known at this time, however, whether changes in the quantity of water—or increased access to sanitation services—now available to households are inducing household time reallocations and subsequently changes in behavior relevant to the generation of income. MCC project logics in WASH no longer require time saved from a project to be “productive” for benefits to result. Projects should carefully examine the WASH context and the assumptions and risks in the project logic to determine whether time savings is a valid benefit stream. Use of more granular data on the areas that are targeted (such as urban vs. rural data) may also be beneficial in this determination.

Improve coordination between intervention, existing evidence, and evaluation to learn what works. The evaluation found little evidence of the investments’ ability to reduce malaria or grow business by improved drainage and water infrastructure. To better evaluate MCC’s investments influence on intended outcomes, MCC must articulate its project logic in greater detail, noting how large infrastructure can lead to desired health outcomes and business growth. In addition, the project logic should be based on existing evidence and each step should be measureable.