Research findings: Ethiopia making good progress in WASH service delivery
Updated - Wednesday 25 January 2012
Findings of the synthesis research paper ‘Reaching universal access: Ethiopia’s Universal Access Plan in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR)’ show that there was improvement in both funding flows and pace of new service delivery over the past few years.
Ethiopia is committed, through its Universal Access Plan (UAP), to achieving full coverage of WASH services by 2012. The goals of the Plan are intended to be achieved in parallel with, and based upon, a process of decentralisation. This decentralisation is a combination of democratic decentralisation based, in part, upon Ethiopia’s nature as a federal state; and a process of administrative de-concentration intended to make service delivery more equitable, efficient and effective.
The research found that the implementation of decentralisation remains incomplete, with much remaining to be done in terms of defining the roles of actors at different levels and the links between them. Regional government still plays a major role in decision making and even in scheme implementation and follow up, while decentralised offices at the Woreda level are under-staffed and under-resourced. Much of the policy and legislation relating to decentralisation is new, and in the process of being applied. There remain considerable areas of ambiguity and lack of clarity.
The findings are mixed. On the one hand increased funding flows and increased construction of new schemes is broadly positive. On the other hand, the distribution of schemes and their sustainability give cause for concern. From a governance perspective, a particular concern relates to the lack of a solid information base upon which to make planning and allocation decisions, as indicated by important differences between official figures and those in the surveys and reported by many of the sector actors interviewed.
In short, full coverage is achievable, with significant additional effort and improved sector governance and planning. Rapid change and real improvements are taking place but critical bottlenecks remain and need to be addressed for the Universal Access Plan to succeed.
