Mid term assessment blues
This is a post I made yesterday on our waterservicesthatlast blog. I’m sure there’s a smarter way to post to multiple blogs at once – but for now can’t find it – so this is straight cut-n-past! Its also my first post in a while – since leaving Ghana and ‘returning’ to live in Ireland … Read more
Standardised hand pumps – a good thing?
Paul van Beers of FairWater.Org manufacturer of the ‘Blue Pump’ is frustrated by the process (or lack of it) of standardisation around handpump designs. He has a point. There is a tendency in the rural water sector to assume that standardisation is a ‘good thing’ – because it helps to simplify spare parts chains, allows … Read more
The biggest myth of all – rural people want clean drinking water?
During the opening plenary, Richard Carter of WaterAid presents RWSN’s excellent “myths of the rural water supply sector paper”. I’ve liked this paper since it first appeared, capturing as it does in a succinct and pithy form so many of the challenges the sector faces in moving beyond manically sticking holes in the ground and … Read more
Water services in the danger zone
During the afternoon session on “post construction support and partnerships for sustainable rural water services” my colleague Jeske Verhoeven makes a presentation based on our latest WASHCost working paper on the costs of providing recurrent support to service providers. One of the slides showed the diagram that I’ve included here. This is a slightly modified … Read more
Mr Phiri’s story – bypassing local government doesn’t lead to lasting services
Mr Phiri’s story – bypassing local government doesn’t lead to lasting services An excellent presentation by Mr. Edgar Phiri – district Water Officer from Mwanza District Council in Malawi – during one of the parallel sessions on day one (the proceedings don’t seem to be on the RWSN blog yet – but as soon as they … Read more
Handpump functionality: what is the threshold for area mechanics?
My colleague Catarina Fonseca attended the “managing handpump water supplies” session. She says “after three hours of plenary and sessions, we keep hearing about low levels of functionality. 65% of handpumps in Chad being non-functional was the latest figure reported by Philippe Lacour-Gayet from IDO. In the session (again – when links are available we’ll … Read more
Rural Water Supply Network’s 6th Forum
NB – this (and all other RWSN forum posts) is a reposting of material that also exists on the page ‘Rural Water Supply Network’s 6th Forum’. I now realise that creating a new page for this was a mistake! Live and learn …. The Opening Sitting at the back of the large and luxurious Speke … Read more
What ever became of DRA?
Back to the blog after a long break – holidays and exploding work load … this was provoked by an interesting question that came up during a recent visit to Washington to present and discuss some of the findings from our Water Services that Last and Life Cycle Cost work. We had been presenting findings … Read more
Isomorphic mimicry – or the challenge of the empty organigramme
Could anyone resist a paper that, in the introduction, promises to ‘explicitly eschew the assumptions and Hegelian teleology of classic modernization theory’!?Not me anyway. While Hegelian teleology is fun, and well worth a visit to Wikipedia (for non political scientists like myself), isomorphic mimicry as a mechanism for ensuring development failure is a genuinely useful … Read more
Zero subsidy approaches … a barrier to the poor?
Interesting report from the Poverty Action Lab that presents overall findings (from a series of RCTs) on the impact of charging small fees to poor users of essential (primarily medical) products (‘The Price is Wrong’). The findings – in short – that charging even very low fees has a negative impact on uptake by the … Read more
