WaterAid's plans for Tanzania: 2005-2010

A new strategy running from 2005 to 2010 sets out the future plans and activities for WaterAid in Tanzania. During this time WaterAid will continue to focus on water, sanitation and hygiene education working with local partners on community managed projects.

The key aims are to:

• Directly help 80,000 more people gain access to water and 40,000 more people gain access
  to sanitation and hygiene every year by 2010
• Strengthen local government and support local partner organisations and other non governmental organisations to ensure at least a further 100,000 people gain access to safe water by 2010

Eighteen year old Tatu Muhamed, Msangi village, Tabora Region, Tanzania

Credit: WaterAid / Brent Stirton

"I have not gone to school in many years. My father died of tuberculosis when I was very young and I stopped going to school because it was a very long way from home. I had to collect water for the family and prepare porridge and wash our clothes. Now we have these wells I have got two hours free - I've got more time to rest. I am happy because this water is near my home and it is clean and safe. "

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), internationally agreed targets to tackle world poverty by 2015, aim to halve the proportions of people without water and sanitation. WaterAid works closely with local governments to strengthen their ability to meet the targets in their areas by providing equitable water and sanitation services to everyone including the most marginalised sections of society. By localising the MDGs in this way WaterAid is integrating its policy work and its field work - reaching more of the country's poorest people.

WaterAid believes local government should be accountable to the communities they serve. Fundamental to this process is the water point density mapping which shows the population and the number of functioning and non-functioning water points. WaterAid is helping the Tanzanian Government to carry out their own studies after successful mapping by the local government in Dodoma. With these maps the communities and their representatives can see the inequity of provision and are therefore better placed to demand better services.

Tanzania needs 3000 new water points per year in rural areas. In fact at present only a few hundred water points are being built each year, the majority of which are in just one region, Shinyanga. If all regions in Tanzania performed comparably around 4000 water points could be built each year, easily meeting the MDG targets. However, budgets are small and fragmented, while expenditure is difficult to monitor. Until recently local councils were allocated just US$0.11 for each person they were expected to provide with safe water and sanitation.

Poverty is greater in rural areas than in urban areas and yet 63% of donor spending in 2004/5 was on urban water supplies, less than 10% of the donor budget was targeted at village water supplies and less than 2% of the entire 2004/5 budget was spent on low cost technologies such as shallow wells and protected springs. In contrast most of WaterAid's resources in Tanzania are focused on rural areas.

However, WaterAid is currently developing an urban strategy to better identify where its work in major settlements could be most effective. Cholera outbreaks are frequent in urban areas and in rapidly expanding unplanned settlements. Piped sewerage systems cover less than 20% of urban households and people are on average spending more time fetching water than they did in the 1990s. At present, WaterAid's urban work is carried out exclusively in Dar es Salaam where WaterAid provides water and hygiene education to people not connected to the mains supply. At the same time we are working with new river basin and catchment authorities in Dar es Salaam and are advocating for better regulation to combat bacteriological and industrial pollution and saline intrusion into groundwater supplies. WaterAid, with help from the London School of Hygiene, is developing a marketing approach to promote latrines and emptying services. We are also raising awareness of urban sanitation and hygiene among communities so that the people themselves then take action to improve hygiene practices and demand services.