Why WB’s water failure in Tanzania ‘grim news’

Mlanda. During the dry season, students walk on the brownish-red sand, passing a water pump adjacent to school buildings.

A plastic bag covering the nozzle is a reminder for the central Tanzanian village of Mlanda that water has not flown from it for years.

Outside the school, a bright yellow bucket sits atop the head of a girl, moving slowly across the limitless landscape. Adila is returning home from a two-kilometre walk to the nearest water source — a ground well, where farmers take their livestock to drink — to fill a 20-litre bucket. She too passes the barren pump and the classroom, where her classmates sit to learn.

Adila will miss classes this afternoon, like she does nearly every day. She must carry water home before turning around and heading back to school.

Speak with Tanzanians today, and you’ll hear them describe an ambitious dream: to shed the country’s 60-year legacy as a “third world” nation, and emerge as a thriving middle-income one, despite allegations of a culture of government corruption that has led donors to suspend about $500 million in budgetary aid.

For some, achieving the goal of a middle-income Tanzania begins with water. The single broken-down pump in Adila’s home village of Mlanda is one of the thousands across Tanzania. In 2007, the World Bank joined an unprecedented drive the Tanzanian government had launched in 2006 to fix its water crisis once and for all. In the past, international donors funded different projects in the country’s water sector. This time, the World Bank would provide Tanzania with the financial and technical support to organise them to pool their money together, in a grand experiment that combines rural and urban water resource management into one plan.

To date the drive has attracted more than $1.42 billion — including $200 million in direct budget support from the World Bank as well as funding from various other donors and the Tanzanian government — an incredible sum for a single project in a country like Tanzania.

The initial goal was ambitious: to bring improved access to water to 65 per cent of rural Tanzanians and 90 per cent of urbanites by 2010, and continue until each citizen had safe drinking water. By all available metrics, the project has failed: When the project began, only 54 per cent of Tanzanians had access to what is called an improved water source — a water point, like a well or water pump protected from contamination. Seven years into the project, that figure has actually decreased — now at 53 per cent, according to the latest World Bank Data. Coupled with Tanzania’s rising population, today 3.8 million more Tanzanians lack access to improved water than did before the project began.

Others are at immediate risk of failing as communities find themselves unable to raise the money to fix and maintain them. Experts across Tanzania’s water industry say the programme is failing to address fundamental challenges that have plagued Tanzania’s water sector for decades.

They are only trying to intervene for a short time — “let’s keep the system working for a couple of years,” says Herbert Kashillilah, chair of Water Witness Tanzania. “If I am from the World Bank, it is easier to count new projects than try to ensure people are running their own systems.”

The World Bank defends the programme, arguing that despite its slow start and the likelihood that some water points will stop working, it is better than doing nothing.

“The problem of providing rural water around the world hasn’t been cracked,” says Philippe Dongier, World Bank country director for Tanzania. “You could say, ‘if that’s not going to be sustainable, why should we build it?’ But that could be said all over the world.”

A World Bank spokesman in Washington interviewed recently said while data used to analyse the initiative was “factually correct,” it combines rural and urban data. The spokesman said combined data could hide some of the overall successes the project has had in improving access to clean water in rural areas.

The spokesman added that the government, with support from the World Bank, had brought access to 8 million more people in rural areas through this initiative. But due to an increase in population, when viewed as a percentage, access to clean water has actually decreased in Tanzania.

So, governments and international financial institutions continue investing hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the project going, despite evidence that it hasn’t succeeded. Plus $102.9 million more has been committed to the programme in the past year alone, and the deadline for completion of the first stage has been extended for a third time, to December 2015.

Meanwhile, revelations about the transfer of $122 million from Tanzania’s central bank into overseas private accounts led a dozen funders, many of the same ones, who backed the project, to halt payments. The money was sent by the state-owned power company Tanesco to IPTL, an independent power company. Both groups say it was legal, but opposition politicians and watchdogs cry foul.

Allegations of a cover up have dogged the government and they got louder as the Prime Minister asked for the Parliament to cancel debating corruption allegations earlier last month.

Why is such an unprecedented project lagging behind its lofty goals? Why does the World Bank continue soliciting hundreds of millions of dollars for it?

An investigation undertaken by The GroundTruth Project for GlobalPost interviewed more than two dozen government and World Bank officials, Tanzanian water engineers and independent experts along with community leaders in places, where water projects were to take place.

Only recently have steps been taken to address the worst of the challenges. Meanwhile, millions of Tanzanians in villages across the country are clamouring for improved access to water and demanding accountability for the millions of dollars in loans.

Their cause is urgent: In 2004, a total of 32,665 Tanzanians died from illnesses directly related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene, according to the World Health Organisation, accounting for a startling 12 per cent of all deaths that year for any reason. That’s 9,000 more water-related deaths than in neighbouring Kenya, which has roughly the same population.

The project’s failure thus far raises serious doubts about the ability of international donors to achieve lasting progress anywhere, even as institutions pour billions more dollars into global water pipelines. In Tanzania, the setbacks have a direct impact on millions of Tanzanians.

For Adila, it means time away from school, the risk of falling behind her classmates and a cascade of negative consequences that could continue for the rest of her life. She is but one example of a problem facing the entire nation. (GlobalPost)