Local government and communities at work: questioning the Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

In Tanzania less than 50 percent of the urban population has access to sanitation. In Dar es Salaam, where the situation is even worse due to the current dispersed urban growth pattern, all International Organisations highlight that the Millennium Development Goal of sustainable access to basic sanitation will not be achieved.

The municipal government promotes policies to improve sanitation services for the urban poor and to empower communities in managing infrastructure projects. It attempts to foster better coordination among different institutions working in sanitation: international organisation, local and international NGOs, private companies, and communities. And all stakeholders must learn to develop common strategies in providing urban services.

The Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project (CWSSP) is the main outcome of these efforts. The CWSSP represents a community-driven strategy to deliver (water supply and) sanitation services to low income people in Dar es Salaam. The Dar es Salaam Water & Sewerage Authority (DAWASA) plays a key role, not only in the implementation of project activities, but also in governing inter-institutional coordination/collaboration and conflicts, with the aim of overcoming the weak coordination between local government and communities.

Despite the success of a pilot sanitation project, the CWSSP has mostly worked in water supply involving more than 200,000 stakeholders in fifty communities. Sanitation remains in a marginal position, but specific interventions in the pro-poor sanitation sector are becoming a pressing issue to truly upgrade sanitation conditions for Dar es Salaam’s low income population.

The paper presents a SWOT analysis of the CWSSP, questioning the Municipality’s’ role and highlighting the institutional fragmentation of the project’s actors. The analysis shows how coordination between local government and communities is crucial in delivering sustainable sanitation services to the urban poor. It also underscores how international development cooperation actors, and especially NGOs, represent the key intermediate institution on the ground for encouraging communities to consider sanitation as a project and local agenda priority.

[Paper to be presented at the IRC symposium Sanitation for the Urban Poor, Delft, The Netherlands, 19 - 21 November 2008]