Tag: Uganda

In Memoriam: Hon. Maria Mutagamba

It is with great sadness that we have heard of the passing of the Honorable Maria Mutagamba, former Minister for Water & Environment, Uganda.

by Sean Furey, RWSN Secretariat

It is with great sadness that we have heard of the passing of the Honorable Maria Mutagamba on 24 June, at the age of 64. Mrs Mutagamba was an economist and politician, who according to Wikipedia:

…was born in Rakai District on 5 September 1952. She studied at St. Aloysius Senior Secondary School in Bwanda, Kalungu District for her O-Level studies (1967–1970). She then attended Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga in Mukono District for her A-Level education (1971–1972). She attended Makerere University from 1973 until 1976, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in economics. She also held a Diploma in computer programming from the ICL Computer School in Nairobi, Kenya, obtained in 1980, and a certificate in executive leadership from the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, obtained in 1997.[5] In 2013, she was presented with an honorary doctorates in law from the Canadian McMaster University.[6]

DSC_0177She served in various posts in the Government of Uganda, most recently as Minister for Tourism. However, she is best known to RWSN members as the State Minister for Water Resources, from 2000, and then Minister for Water and Environment between 2004 and 2012. During this period she served as President, African ministers’ council on water (AMCOW), (2004–2012).

Under her leadership, the Ministry of Water & Environment became internationally recognised as leading actor in African water management issues, with a capable civil service team and an open attitude to innovation and collaboration with international partners.  Annual processes of Joint Sector Reviews and Sector Performance reporting became the gold standard of improving coordination, reporting and accountability across the WASH and water resources sectors.

I had the pleasure of meeting her when she came to open the 6th RWSN Forum in 2011 – of which she was a great supporter – and then again at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille. I was struck by how humble and thoughtful she was, yet also strong and with a keen intellect.  She had a particular passion for rainwater harvesting, which she saw as an opportunity that was being missed.

According to the New Vision and other news sources, she had been suffering poor health for some time and died of liver cancer.  Uganda has sadly lost a great water champion.

Photos: Hon. Maria Mutagamba opening the 6th RWSN Forum, Kampala, 2011

 

 

3 ways countries can improve water supplies in small towns

by Fadel Ndaw, World Bank Global Water Practice – reblogged from http://blogs.worldbank.org/water/3-ways-countries-can-improve-water-supplies-small-towns

water-small-town-bolivia

A public faucet that serves 1,000 families in el Alto, Bolivia. Photo credit: Stephan Bachenheimer / World Bank

Small towns* typically have not been well served by national or regional water utilities. Decentralization has become increasingly widely adopted, but even if local governments at the small town level have the power to operate a water utility, they often lack the capital and skills to do so. In response, some local governments and public institutions concentrate improvements on upgrading public utilities’ operations or strengthening community based management. In other cases, they choose to bring in the private sector knowledge of how to get clean water and sanitation services to more people more efficiently, affordably or sustainably. There is no one solution to addressing often very complex water and sanitation challenges.

Continue reading “3 ways countries can improve water supplies in small towns”

Kampala WASH Symposium — Improve International

By Susan Davis, Executive Director, Improve International Last month, I went to one day of the Kampala WASH Symposium. The theme was “From Projects to Services: WASH Sustainability through Whole System Approaches.” I wish I could have attended more, especially the open houses and field trips, but had had other commitments. This was the sixth […]

via Kampala WASH Symposium — Improve International

Make Bottled Water Available and Affordable

Guest Blog by Francis Mujuni, WASH Specialist@MCID

Francis Mujuni
Francis Mujuni, MCID, Uganda

Uganda with a population of 37 million people an annual population growth rate of 3.2% makes it one of the fastest growing countries in Africa (UBOS 2014)[1]. With such rate of growth compounded by high levels of poverty the country is unable to provide its people the required social amenities to live healthy and productive lives. With a per capita annual income of less than US$600, Uganda is still one of the world’s poorest countries where a quarter of its population lives on less than $1.25 a day[2].  Poor sanitation and lack of safe water costs Uganda an equivalent of $177 million a year. Total health expenditure as a percentage of GDP was in 2013 was about 9.8% with $21 million spent on healthcare due to poor sanitation and $147 lost due to premature death[3].

Continue reading “Make Bottled Water Available and Affordable”

Learning in the rural water supply sector – a complexity perspective

by Felix Knipschild, reblogged from IRC

How can I conceptualise and model learning in the rural water supply system in Uganda?

This is the challenge I’ll be working on for the next 5 months at IRC. I’m a student at Delft University of Technology, following the master Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management. At my faculty, we learn to look at the intersections between technical systems and social systems and design for complex systems.

Continue reading “Learning in the rural water supply sector – a complexity perspective”

Innovations in Community Based Organisations, in Indonesia

So I’m at the Indonesia International Water Week 2015 and on the second day, the event has been split into six parallel streams:

  1. Sustainable Access to Safe Drinking Water
  2. Community Based Water Supply
  3. Domestic Wastewater Management
  4. Municipal Solid Waste Management and Domestic Wastewater
  5. Water Resources: Sinking Cities / Towards Better Implementation of IWRM
  6. Water Resources: Measuring Progress / Water Infrastructure & Water Resources Management

Continue reading “Innovations in Community Based Organisations, in Indonesia”

Uganda: Kitgum Residents Share Water Points With Animals

Interesting article in relation to recent RWSN discussions on Multiple Use Services (MUS) of water

WaterSan Perspective

Dan Michael Komakech
June 23, 2014

Residents of Toboi in Lolwa parish Orom Sub County in Kitgum district have resorted to sharing contaminated rain runoff water that collects on rock inselbergs with animals due to scarce water points in the vicinity.

The resident explain that they survive on dirty unprotected water from Lela Toboi inselberg because of the far distance of over three to seven kilometers that one has to trek in search of clean drinking water in the neighboring villages of Wipolo and Tikau and Karekalet river spring.

The situation has rendered residents particularly the most vulnerable elderly, disability and children to opt for nothing other than runoff water from contaminated sources which makes them exposed to water borne diseases and death.

“If it rains we utilize rain runoff water that gathers on these inselberg and if it dries off we trek to Wipolo aor Tikau where we are…

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Cautiously optimistic

More useful analysis from the Triple-S team

water services that last

What will it take to create WASH sectors that work? 

By Patrick Moriarty, Harold Lockwood, and Sarah Carriger

Over the past few months in a series of posts we’ve been advocating for a change in the goal of the WASH sector – from increasing coverage to delivering a service over the long haul; from simply building infrastructure to building infrastructure and managing it into the future to provide services worthy of the name.

And we’ve been calling for a change in approach — from piecemeal projects to strengthening the whole system that delivers services.

We’ve shown how we’ve gone about supporting this type of change in Ghana together with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency, and we’ll continue posting examples from other countries where we’re working.

For now, in the final post in this series, we’d like to talk more about what committing to this change calls for from…

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Understanding why waterpoints fail

By Vincent Casey, Technical Support Manager, and Richard Carter.  (originally posted on the WaterAid website)