Regional Water and Sanitation Workshop, Nairobi 18-21 October 2010

The seminar was hold in Nairobi from 18 to 21 October, 2010. In total, some 28 people participated representing European Investment Bank, the European Union delegations of Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Somalia, Swaziland ; Directorate General Development; Europe Aid Cooperation Office (AIDCO); Plan Kenya, Ecotac, Kenya; Ministry of Water and Irrigation (Water Services Regulatory Board, Water Services Trust Fund), Kenya and national delegations from Lesotho, Namibia and Rwanda. The 4 day seminar was divided into 3 parts: Day 1 : Supporting the water sector when it is not a focal sector and field visit; Day 2: Basic sanitation – demand – supply – enabling environment; Day 3: Institutional context and sector budget support; Day 4: Finance and procedures Six topics were selected against which there was a focus on three cross cutting themes supported by pre-seminar questionnaires: Capacity building; decentralisation and, indicators and results based management. The topics and their rationale for selection were: Water reforms were chosen as a topic because of the 8 year radical sector reform process that has been underway in Kenya. It gives an example to other countries of the difficulty but also the benefits of reform. The water facility when water is not a focal sector was chosen as a topic because many of the delegations in Africa, particularly Eastern Africa do not have water as a focal sector but are nevertheless much involved in the sector through the water facility and in sector dialogue. Sanitation was chosen as a topic, on the one hand, because it represents one of the MDG areas that is most off track and, on the other hand, because its huge impact on public health and the growing evidence of innovative approaches that offer possibilities for scaling up physical implementation and behaviour change. Kenya also has very interesting experience in community led total sanitation approaches and in private sector led approaches. Sector budget support and the problem of indicators was chosen because of the importance of ensuring linkage with performance assessment frameworks and ensuring clear impact, outcome and output indicators. Namibia has done a lot of work on indicators for the fixed and variable tranches and their work is potentially useful for other countries and even other sectors. Finance was chosen as a topic in order to continue the fruitful dialogue between the European Commission and the European Investment Bank that was deepened by the joint seminar in Brussels in July 2010. In this case the discussion took place much closer to the ground and an example from Malawi was provided which enabled delegations to see how to link with the bank in practice. Procedures was chosen as topic because of the lesson learnt at the last seminar in Brussels on the water sector i.e. it is no use to describe practical application of the approaches, if the procedure and instruments to make use of them are also not addressed. The questions that arose from earlier seminars include: How to apply the innovative approaches in sanitation with the finance tools available? How to cooperate between the EU and the European Investment Bank – what are the procedures and steps?