Water supply and sanitation programmes Shinyanga region, Tanzania 1990-2006

Support to water supply and sanitary facilities has been a priority for Netherlands development co-operation for many years. For the current policy on development co-operation, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the guiding principle. These include the target to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people in 1990 without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basis sanitation. The purpose of support to water supply and sanitary facilities goes beyond sustainable access: it is intended to reduce the burden of water collection (typically a task of women and girls); improve health; raise school enrolment and attendance; improve livelihoods and ultimately reduce poverty. The Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs has initiated a series of impact evaluations of Netherlands-supported water supply and sanitation programmes. There is consensus worldwide on the impacts of programmes for water supply and sanitary facilities; conventional evaluation studies do not, however, normally quantify these. In the impact studies, a combination of quantitative statistical and qualitative methods and techniques are used. With the series of impact studies IOB wishes to explore how the magnitude of the effects of these programmes can be measured. The first in the series is this evaluation of the Netherlands-supported rural programmes in Tanzania, Shinyanga Region. The experience built up in Shinyanga Region has served as a reference for the current national Water Sector Development Programme, rural water supply component. he focus of the impact evaluation is on the effects of the support provided to water user communities on the population of Shinyanga region, and on the contribution of the concerned local level institutions to sustainable result.