Brian McSorley works for Oxfam as a Water and Sanitation Engineering Advisor. He was the focal point for SWIFT in Kenya until April 2016. He looks back at the programme as it comes to an end.
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Overall it has been particularly satisfying to have led this process from conception through to successful delivery of the output phase and more recently to hear that the outcome phase has gone well.
Before SWIFT started
I joined the Kenya team in the aftermath of a major drought response in 2006. The variety of work (drought response, drought preparedness, resilience support, start up of urban WASH and refugee response) had kept me busy and motivated. But by the start of 2013, I had been WASH coordinator in Kenya for 7 years and I was ready for a new challenge. That was when the opportunity of a large DFID funded multi-country WASH proposal was mentioned.
I stayed in Kenya for an extra 2 years because of SWIFT. It was a full-time job that I ate, drank and slept thinking about, but not in a bad way, because it was so interesting.
Designing a payment by results programme
The SWIFT programme officially started in April 2014, but by then there had already been at least 9 months of preparation to respond to DFID’s call for proposal. The whole programme was a calculated risk for Oxfam and failure to deliver would have significant financial – as well as reputational – consequences for the organisation as a whole. The challenge was that 100% of the work had to be complete and water flowing out of taps for us to get paid, failure wasn’t an option.
One of my concerns was that in focusing only on hitting beneficiary numbers, quality would suffer and/or we would focus on “easy wins/low hanging fruit”, so not going to the remotest locations or addressing the needs of the most marginalised people. In reality, this didn’t happen. We targeted larger urban centres where we could hit high numbers of people cost effectively, but their needs were just as high as as in rural areas.
The SWIFT programme is a great example of what Oxfam can achieve. It was exciting because it was WASH at scale. This is what Oxfam is known for.
Successes
Oxfam in Kenya provided access to improved water and/or sanitation to over 100,000 people. With other partners (Concern, Practical Action, WSUP and Sanergy) a total of 200,000+ people reached the Millenium Development Goal for water and sanitation access. And together with BBC Media Action, our consortium reached over 330,000 people to raise awareness of the importance of improved hygiene practices on public health, particularly linked to handwashing with soap.
The large infrastructural outputs delivered are built upon activities aimed at community empowerment, strengthening local and national institutions, effective governance and accountability by individuals, institutions, government and ourselves. SWIFT did all of this, and with it, externally demonstrated what a world class organisation we are.
SWIFT increased the visibility of Oxfam in country, consolidated our reputation for high quality, innovative WASH work. It gave us legitimacy at local, national and international level and provided a platform to launch other initiatives from.
Programme highlights
Stand out parts of the programme for me include the large scale solar water networks Oxfam installed, the largest of which was in Lodwar Town in Turkana and pumped 60m3 of water per hour. The 3 water networks in Lodwar that Oxfam constructed provide almost 1 million additional litres of water per day. Accompanied by capacity building and systems strengthening of the water utility company, it resulted in transformational improvements to access to water in the town. Revenue collection has greatly improved putting the water utility company on a firm footing and this has been reflected in pay increases to staff and improvements to working conditions, with an expectation that a happier work force will lead to further improvements.
The limited resources of SWIFT were highly effective in leveraging co-financing from country and other partners (e.g. Tullow Oil) for boreholes, pipelines, water storage reservoirs etc. This enabled funding to stretch further and have greater impact.
Despite the pressure to deliver numbers, there was also a considerable amount of innovation within the Kenya work particularly through Oxfam’s work on water with large scale solar, water ATMs, e-billing and work with utilities in Turkana and Wajir, or Sanergy’s work in Nairobi.
The sanitation work Oxfam did in Kakuma, although relatively modest in number of beneficiaries reached, was remarkable in what was achieved. From a baseline of around 10% latrine coverage to nearly 100% coverage in some villages, considering their economic needs, this progress is outstanding.
County Government went from a position of being highly critical as they were reluctant to consider any variation to Community Led Total Sanitation, to extremely supportive and strong advocates for our work.
Best memory
Personally, the most satisfying work was what we did in providing a solar pumping system in Kataboi, Turkana. Kataboi was the first village I visited in 2006 on my first trip to Turkana. Oxfam supported the village during several drought response and recovery programmes, but because of the technical challenges present (prevalence of saline groundwater, distance and elevation to pump water) we failed to provide a long term durable solution – until SWIFT.
We then partnered with Tullow Oil to equip a borehole they had drilled with a solar pump. As a result the village is now thriving and moved from a situation of severe water rationing (they only had access to water once or twice a week) where they were considering closure of the local school, to a thriving expanding centre (lots of new construction work when I last visited that was directly attributed to the improved water supply). The chairman of the water user association, whom I had consistently met over the years when I travelled to Turkana, was delighted of the outcome when I last met him in 2017.
